A SET OF SIX FINELY PAINTED INNER COVER PANELS FROM THE 1794 QIANLONG KANGYUR IN MANCHU SCRIPT

The Qianlong 1794 Kangyur fragments in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, are preliminarily classified as National Treasures. The present lot belongs to this corpus.

External Expert Authentication: This lot was authenticated and dated by Anthony M. Lee, confirming the dating stated above. Lee has written an essay for this exceptional group, titled ‘By Imperial Command’, which is reproduced verbatim in its entirety further below, along with supplementary images selected by us.

Anthony M. Lee is an art consultant, gallery owner, and collector based in Toronto, Canada, with over 40 years of experience. He developed Asian art departments for several auction houses and has worked with almost every major museum collection of Asian art in North America. He is the author of two books on Zen Buddhism and one on the Japanese tea ceremony.

China. Distemper on card with silk brocade covers, framed in card covered in brocade, and with three silk coverlets each. The panels each painted with five arches separated by multi-colored clouds, the support pillars emanating from sacred vases (khumba) and dotted with blue and green jewels, enclosing a fantastic array of peaceful and wrathful protectors, yidam, and wealth deities, backed by vivid flames, and flanked by yellow cartouches with gold inscriptions in Manchu script identifying each deity:

1. Five forms of Mahakala
2. Five forms of Dakini
3. Five benign forms of Bhairava, Skanda and 3 Ratna deities
4. Vaishravana and the Four Guardian Kings
5. Benign forms of Vajradhara, Yama, Parnashavari, Sitatapatra, and Kurukulla
6. Kubera, Brahma, Vaishravana, Indra, and Bhairava

Provenance: From the Dr. Theos Casimir Bernard Collection. Sotheby’s New York, 28 March 1996, lot 23 (part-lot). A private collection in New York, United States, acquired from the above. The backs with remnants of old labels. Dr. Theos Casimir Bernard (1908-1947) was an American scholar, and practitioner of yoga and Tibetan Buddhism, often recognized as one of the earliest Westerners to immerse himself in Tibetan spiritual traditions and played a crucial role in introducing Indian yogic traditions and Tibetan ritual to Western audiences. Born into a family with strong academic and spiritual interests, Bernard earned his degrees from Columbia University, where he focused on Indic religions. He is perhaps best remembered for his pioneering journey to Tibet in the 1930s, an endeavor that was rare at the time, which he documented in his book Penthouse of the Gods (1939). During his travels, Bernard amassed a substantial collection of Tibetan texts, manuscripts, and ritual objects, which he hoped to use to establish a center for Tibetan studies in the West. Many of his materials were later donated or acquired by institutions such as the University of California and the American Museum of Natural History.
Condition: Overall good condition with expected wear, minimal rubbing to pigments, light soiling, few minor surface scratches, traces of insect activity with few associated minute losses to three folios. One folio with few minor tears to the short edges and one figure with further tears. The silk coverlets with few small losses, light tears, and little soiling. The brocade with few loose threads, fading, and losses.

Weight: 5,402 g (total)
Dimensions: each ca.16.5 x 58.4 cm (excl. mounting) and 23.2 x 72.4 cm (incl. mounting)

Literature comparison:
Compare a related canon of Tibetan Buddhism translated into Manchu script, dated to Qing dynasty, Qianlong period, in the Palace Museum.

By Imperial Command
By Anthony M. Lee

This set of six manuscript covers for Buddhist texts (sutras) are among an exceedingly rare group of artifacts surviving from a Qing imperial tradition meant to honour both Mongol and Tibetan monasticism.

As early as the 9^th century, Chinese Buddhist texts were commonly accordion bound, the standard of government and scholarly texts. Many imperial sutras survive from the Ming dynasty, often prefaced by fine painted images of Buddha, the most luxurious commissions written on azure blue paper in gold (fig. 1). For reading Chinese this was easiest as the characters were arranged in vertical rows reading right to left. The earliest Buddhist scriptures of South and Southeast Asia, however, were written on palm leaves with horizontal lines of text on stacked pages. This format even after the development of paper required that the delicate and loose pages be protected and flattened with top and bottom wood board covers. Mongol and Tibetan Buddhist traditions followed this older, southern tradition.

The second Ming Emperor, Yongle (1402-1424) was a fervent supporter of Tibetan Buddhism, wishing to renew the relationship that the preceding Mongol rulers had with the Lamaist lineages. In 1410 he commissioned a complete printed set of the 108 volumes of the Tibetan canon, Kangyur (BKa-gyur), in large format (73 x 27 cm) that was distinctly Imperial in style. The few covers which have survived in museum and other collections are wood with vermillion lacquer and gold designs (fig. 2), painted with Eight Buddhist treasures on the exterior, the interior of the top covers with a mandorla cartouche inscribed in Tibetan Lanca script and the Chinese title and numbering or volume of the text. Other examples from the same set are lacquered red with a single auspicious Buddhist symbol (fig. 3). Originally housed at Pusading Temple, Wutaishan (fig. 4), a temple he had extensively rebuilt and expanded, it is unknown how many of these volumes survive intact with their original covers. The Wanli emperor (1572-1620) also commissioned a printed Kangyur to be housed at Pusading.

For the succeeding Qing dynasty, Pusading remained an important connection to Tibetan Buddhism; the Shunzhi emperor (1644-1661) extensively renovated the temple complex and gave it Imperial protection, and both the Kangxi (1662-1722) and Qianlong (1736-1795) emperors patronized and stayed there on several occasions. In 1669, supported by the Mongol nobility among his mother’s relations, the second Qing Emperor, Kangxi did his Ming predecessors one better by ordering a sumptuous edition of the Kangyur (fig. 5) in 108 volumes comprising red lacquered wood covers, gold on black framed interior covers, text handwritten on lacquer prepared card, in addition to silk bags, wrappings and cordage. The addition of interior covers follows a more Mongol tradition of having a painting of tutelary or protective deities inside the volume, separate from the exterior cover itself. A century later, in 1770, the Qianlong Emperor commissioned another Kangyur (fig. 6) in a similar format to the Kangxi edition, and a further print edition in Manchu script in 1794 (fig. 7) in similar format of 108 volumes. The present six interior covers appear to be part of this 1794 corpus.

Early Buddhist manuscripts on palm leaf had wood covers ‘sandwiching’ the text, possibly plain, possibly lightly decorated. By the 11^th century, Buddhist texts followed the example of Jain texts and the first few pages interspersed text with gouache Buddhist images, leading eventually to lacquer decorated interior covers. Early Tibetan covers would continue this form, often with less sacred decorative elements on the exteriors while protecting the images of the Buddha on the interiors (fig. 8). In time, Tibetan covers would show Buddhist images in carved relief on both the exterior and at times the interior. The Mongol tradition added in a frontispiece as a separate interior cover, often thicker and with a Buddha image and at times a cloth covering protecting the image. These interior covers added a further protective layer for the delicate pages, as well as a more spiritual aspect to the complete volume in keeping with the symbolism of Buddhist cosmology (fig. 9). Take as an example any Buddhist stupa, the structure’s five parts—base, dome, spire, capitol, and parasol finial—reflect the five parts of the Buddha’s body—legs, body, heart, head, and nothingness—which correspond also to five elements, chakras, and states of being. Tibetan thangka (mandala) follow the architectural form in two dimensions, and Kangxi’s Imperial Kangyur volumes would reflect the same. The ‘book’ when spread out becomes a spiritual representation of a Buddha body and a graphic representation of a mandala.

Note in the image (fig. 9) of the 1770 Qianlong Kangyur, the top and bottom covers are red, and the text is black. The correct order should be:
1. Red cover
2. Painted cover
3. Black text
4. Painted cover
5. Red cover

The 1669 Kangxi Kangyur interior leading covers (fig. 10) were of wood lacquered black and painted in gold, the reverse with three composite mantras in Lanca script, the obverses with dense scrolling vine with repetition of the Eight Buddhist Emblems, the inset paintings on prepared ground with gilt metal mountings and jewels.

The lower interior covers were painted with three double vajras on the reverse, the obverse showed arrangements of five protective deities or guardians, in one case depicting Brahma flanked by the Four Guardian Kings (fig. 11).

The Qianlong 1770 Kangyur copied the format and design of the interior covers almost exactly from the 1669 version, with only a slight difference in the proportions of the lacquered wood framing around the painted sections. Initiated in 1771, with all translation works completed in 1790, the 1794 Qianlong Kangyur in Manchu script (fig. 7) followed a different design and reduced the size slightly, opting for silk brocade wrapped interior covers with painted mandorlas and jewels instead of gilt metal and real jewels. The painted area was framed in a wave form dental of gold on vermillion gouache, the figures flanked vertically by blue ground lozenges inscribed in Manchu, Chinese, and Lanca.

The matching dimensions, proportions, paint palette, style of painting, borders, and use of gold and silver brocades (though not perfectly matching), clearly connect the six present lower interior covers with the Qianlong 1794 Kangyur corpus, though separated from their texts and the inscriptions in blue lozenges incomplete or worn. According to the National Palace Museum, only one complete Kangyur from the 12 Imperial sets in Manchu script commissioned in 1790 remains intact and is housed in the Potala Palace, Lhasa, while a second complete set is split between the National Palace Museum Taipei (32 cases) and the Palace Museum Beijing (76 cases). The whereabouts of the remaining 10 sets originally housed in temples, palaces, or Imperial libraries is unknown and they are assumed dispersed or possibly destroyed.