Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Temple Banner with pilgrimage sites and scenes from the "Svayambhu-purana" (Ancient Text of the Primordial Buddha)
1635
- Medium
- Gum tempera and gold on cotton
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Overall: 39 x 130.2 cm (15 3/8 x 51 1/4 in.)
- Culture
- Nepal, Kathmandu Valley
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Credit line
- Gift of Mrs. A. S. Ingalls
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
In the upper band, pilgrimage places in and around Nepal’s capital of Kathmandu are mapped and labeled with inscriptions in the Newari language. Below are scenes from the story of a king who ended a drought with the assistance of serpent deities and a Buddhist master. The king rides horseback at the lower left, and the serpent deities are the seated human figures with snake heads behind them. The white vase-shaped monument with pointed top, shown three times, is the Svayambhu Stupa, a sacred monument in Kathmandu dedicated to the Buddha Svayambhu.
Probably half of a complete banner, this piece hung in a monastic courtyard during annual festivals.
