The Preservation of Cultural Collections in the Norbulingka

No matter who, when or how… for people on their first visit to Lhasa, their priorities are to visit the Potala Palace, J okhang Temple and Norbulingka. The name “Norbulingka” means“Treasure Park” in Tibetan. It is situated about two kilometers to the southwest of the Potala Palace. This is the largest and most beautiful complex of buildings in Tibet, combining gardens with palace architecture. In 1988 the Norbulingka was listed as a state-level preserved cultural site and in December 2001 it joined the UNESCO World Heritage List in combination with the Potala Palace and the J okhang Temple.

The Norbulingka was erected during the reign of Kelzang Gyatso, the Seventh Dalai Lama, in the mid-18th century. Since the Seventh Dalai Lama, the Norbulingka has been both the summer palace and administrative office. The Norbulingka features splendid architecture under a golden roof. Preserved inside these buildings are a massive number of rare cultural relics and fascinating frescos. In the past, ordinary people never saw these cultural relics, only Dalai Lamas and a few nobles were so privileged. These relics included Buddhist statues, Thangkas, scriptures, seals, engraved bamboo, religious implements, porcelain utensils, stationary, costumes, furniture and various means of transportation. It seemed everything could be included and it can therefore be regarded as one of the major cultural and artistic repositories apart from the Potala Palace.

Generally speaking, the cultural relics preserved in the Norbulingka are classifi ed into two categories: the fi rst is religious relics produced locally and the second includes various rare and precious relics that were bestowed or granted by central governments and emperors throughout history. These two categories of relics have different characteristics but each embraces a delicate art.

The first category of the relics in the Norbulingka is famous for gilt or bronze Buddhist statues. Early in the construction of the Norbulingka, the Seventh Dalai Lama was concerned to add Buddhist statues and religious implements to the newly built chambers of the Norbulingka. He consequently built an especially designated workshop (“X ue Dui Bai”) to produce Buddhist statues at the foot of the mountain topped by the Potala Palace. There he called on hundreds of craftsmen from different areas of Tibet to produce religious objects, meeting not only the demands of the newly established Norbulingka, but also the monastic demands of Lhasa and other areas close to Lhasa. This workshop took charge of providing Buddhist statues especially for the different chambers in the Norbulingka, as well as many shrines, religious objects, gilded roofs and the doorframes of the Norbulingka. The workshop’s products are well known for their delicate features, fine proportions, bright colors and thick gilding with a high level of purity. Usually, the Buddhist statues from this workshop are decorated with ornaments such as crowns, earrings, bracelets, ribbons, and turquoises. These apparent emblems illustrate that after the mid 18th century, the manufacturing technology of Tibetan icons had reached a mature and independent phase of development.

Amongst the products of this workshop, the most outstanding examples are two pieces depicting the eleven-faced Bodhisattva of Compassion with a thousand-hands and a thousand-eyes. One of these two has been exhibited home and abroad for several times. The statue of Bodhisattva of Compassion is 78 centimeters high, standing on a blossoming lotus that faces upward. His chief arms join together to hold precious pearls in front of his chest; the rest of his arms hold, respectively, a rosary, a wheel, a white lotus, a purifying bottle, a bow and arrow and legal documents. He looks merciful and his whole body is decorated with shining turquoises. When artists created this statue, they successfully portrayed his mercifulness and potency with their fi nely detailed technique. So the whole piece looks very attractive.

Another well-known statue is the Green Tara, gilded and decorated with exquisite ornaments. The Green Tara has a flower-shaped crown above an elegant face. Her body zigzags in three turns, in parallel with a rope of pearls tied around her waist. Towards the bottom of the statue, she wears a thin and most charming dress. The whole piece displays the most outstanding female features accompanied by elegance and nobility, perfectively manifesting the generosity and mercy of the Green Tara. Apart from statues of Buddha and Bodhisattva, the workshop artisans forged many protective warriors to preserve in the Norbulingka. These warriors mostly have an aggressive and infuriated expression, together with great dignity and virtue. They look very fearsome but all express the divinities of protective warriors who are empowered with supreme divine power to banish demons and monsters and protect all beings. In particular the Great Warrior of Dignity and Virtue, who is recognized as the reincarnation of the Buddha of Wisdom and treated as the principle divinity of Gelug Sect and greatly revered by Buddhists.

Tsatsa, as another handcraft, is derived from ancient India and recently disseminated to Tibet. Tsatsa is a Tibetan term used to describe Buddhist statues and protection images that are created as part of a particular meditation practice. Such clay-based miniature crafts often have a variety of patterns such as pagodas, Sanskrit scriptures, Buddhist figures and the universal mantra. Tsatsa crafts are often preserved inside pagodas, monasteries, temples and home-based shrines. Tsatsa crafts preserved in the Norbulingka have their own special signifi cance. The Thirteenth Dalai Lama Tupten Gyasto, blessed them all while he was staying in the Norbulingka. The back of every Tsatsa is gilded with Tibetan inscriptions. It symbolizes the special power of this group of Tsatsa crafts. Of course, their artistic designs are incredibly exquisite. For instance, the Sakyamuni, Longevity Divinity, the Six-armed Mahakala and the Garuda are masterpieces of Tsatsa crafts.

Another worthy art form preserved in the Norbulingka is the Buddhist pagoda. Earlier pagodas were mostly used to preserve the remains of Buddha, referred to as Dagoba. After the entrance of Atisha into Tibet, he built a pagoda by copying dagobas and named it the Gyadang Pagoda. Today these two kinds of pagodas are all preserved in the Norbulingka but the Dagoba are the most precious. They are identical in shape and about 20 centimeter in height. Some Dagobas contain the remains of eminent monks from both India and Tibet, which are invaluable evidence of the cultural exchange and relationship between Indian and Tibetan people.

Together with Buddhist statues and pagodas, Thangka is another outstanding crafts preserved in the Norbulingka where there are a number of different categories of Thangkas from different schools of painting(Miantang School, Qinze School and Gyatse School are preserved). The earliest Thangkas include the masterdisciple portrait of J uedzong, a portrait of Phagmo Drupa Dorje Gyalpo and a portrait of Indian master Birrapa. The portrait of J uedzong depicts the stories regarding how the master Atisha taught his disciple Dromtonpa about Buddhism (“J uedzong” means master and disciple). The portrait has Atisha in the centre with a conical hat covering his ears and wearing a cassock while he is teaching Dromtonpa who is seated beside him. Dromtonpa wears a Tibetan robe and sits cross-legged, carefully listening to his teaching. In the top and bottom of the principle portrait there are several other portraits including the Future Buddha, the Medicine Buddha, the Bodhisattva of Compassion and the Tara. All fi gures are well composed and depicted as if they were real. The background is vermilion framed with gilt lines. This is a Thangka painted in the 13th century that is a very rare piece. Besides, in those preserved paintings of the Gyatse School, the Thangka painted with 84 Indian successes is one of the most featured pieces. These Thangkas are quite different from paintings produced in other painting schools. The composition is very simple and lightly colored but appears elegant and even exquisite. Every portrait is depicted in an exaggerated, often humorous way. This kind of painting is depicted in an unusual way rarely seen outside of the Norbulingka. This series of masterpieces are medical Thangka depicting the Four Medical Tantra. Tibetans called this series of Thangkas “Mantang”. This series of Thangkas, through a series of pictures, depict the principle theory of Tibetan medicine and pharmacology, anatomy, physiology, diagnosis, treatment and divinations of medicine, health care and diet of Tibetan medicine. “Mantang” painting was established during the reign of the Fifth Dalai Lama Ngawang Lozang Gyatso in the Qing Dynasty. In total, there are 79 paintings in the series. In 1916, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama ordered one more painting about well-renowned Tibetan doctors throughout the history of Tibet. Therefore, the complete set of the medical Thangka formed 80 pieces. Currently, this series of medical Thangkas is treated as the standard blue pieces and a complete set of these Thangkas are preserved in the Norbulingka.

As the Norbulingka is situated in a special politic status, apart from a big collections of local relics, there are massive amounts of bestowed and granted items from the central governments and emperors of the Ming and Qing Dynasties: for example… a diamond, gold and bronze Buddha produced in the court of the emperor during the year Yongle, the Kesi silk Thangka painting depicting the gracious religious ruler which was produced in the year of Xuande, and various portraits and rare items. The following introduces only a few pieces amongst the great masterpieces preserved in the Norbulingka:

The fi rst one is the pot and handle with a peony pattern and an under glaze of red as the background, which was given by the court during the years of Hongwu (1386-1398) during the Ming Dynasty. This is well-designed, exquisite and rare porcelain since porcelains with an under glaze of red are diffi cult to produce (with very low prospect of successful production). Therefore there are quite few of this kind of porcelains existing in the world. Such well-preserved porcelain, about 600 years old, is rather rare in Tibet.

The second one was a gift from the central government during the years of Xuande (1426-1435) in the Ming Dynasty, a pot shaped like a clerical hat, which is patterned with an interlocking lotus background in blue and white. The pot refl ects the shape of a clerical hat according to Tibetan Buddhism. This is why the pot is also called “clerical-hat pot”. The whole body of the pot is patterned in blue and white lines. On the belly of the pot are written the Tibetan words “auspiciousness includes daytime, nighttime, noon, the whole night and the three treasures”. However, some characters in the inscription are written incorrectly; obviously it was the product of a Han Chinese craftsman who might know nothing about Tibetan and just copied the words. Curling grass lines decorate the area towards the bottom of the pot and underneath are the words “Produced during the years of the Great Ming”. These blue and white porcelains, produced in years of Xuande during the Ming Dynasty, are famous for their characteristics of simplicity and elegance. The shining red under glaze perfectively compliments the colorful lines that decorate it. During the years of Xuande, cultural exchange between Tibet and inland China was rather intensive. The emperor presented a large number of blue and white porcelains to Tibet and the upper class of Tibet carefully protected them in metal and leather containers. These porcelain pots often contain Tibetan elements, as special products only produced for Tibet by workshops in J ingde Town following the orders of the court.

During the Qing Dynasty, many bestowed gifts from the court entered Tibet. Apart from the Buddhist implements and the porcelains, there are also many curios, such as the colorful gourd-shaped enamels symbolizing the prosperity of having children and having longevity, a ceremonial bottle decorated with eight divinities symbolizing longevity and an enamel tripod symbolizing peace and auspiciousness. They are all the most precious royal wares. Besides, there are also Ruyi (gemstone beads) decorated with rosewood, jade and agate snuffboxes and a splendid carved lacquer fruit container. All of these are artifacts commissioned by the royal family and also bestowed by emperors on the upper class in Tibet.

In short, the collection of the thousands of articles preserved in the Norbulingka is very rich and from these relics we can learn the essence of the Tibetan Plateau and its charming characteristics while understanding the loyalty of the Tibetan people to their religion throughout history, which empowers their creativity. We have inherited the responsibility to protect these priceless cultural relics and to ensure that they be passed down to future generations.