Densatil Stupas of Tibet (Destroyed in Cultural Revolution)

choi

Lee Lawrence, Auspicious Survivors; The Cultural Revolution could not destroy these objects of faith. Wall Street Journal, Mar 4, 2014
online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304610404579403002426701772
(exhibit review on "Golden Visions of Densatil: A Tibetan Buddhist Monastery. Asia Society (New York), Through May 18")

Note:
(a)
(i) Golden Visions of Densatil: A Tibetan Buddhist Monastery. Asia Society, Feb 19-May 18, 2014.
asiasociety.org/new-york/exhibitions/golden-visions-densatil-tibetan-buddhist-monastery
(ii) Holland Cotter, Fragments of a Monastery, Reunited in Body and Spirit; ‘Golden Visions of Densatil’ opens at Asia Society. New York Times, Feb 21, 2014.
www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/arts/ ... t-asia-society.html

You need not read the NYTimes critique.

(b) "Posterity was well served when, in 1948, Italian photographer Pietro Francesco Mele joined scholar Giuseppe Tucci on an expedition to central Tibet. In the Densatil region they visited a 12th-century monastery with, Tucci wrote, 'a wealth of carvings and reliefs that knew no limits.' Some 20 years after they marveled at figures that 'sprang into life, glittering with gold,' Mele's photographs were all that remained. Fired up by Mao's calls to 'eliminate superstitions['] and the 'Four Olds'—culture, customs, habits and ideas—mobs of Chinese and Tibetans ransacked and vandalized some 6,000 monasteries across Tibet during China's Cultural Revolution."
(i) The southern Italian surname Mele is "from mele, a dialect form of miele [noun masculine for] ‘honey.’"
(ii) The Italian surname Tucci means "son of Tuccio."
(iii) The Italian surname Tuccio is "from a short form of any of various personal names ending with the hypocoristic suffix -(t)uccio, for example Albertuccio, Robertuccio."
(A) hypocorism (n; Late Latin hypocorisma, from Greek hypokorisma, from hypokorizesthai to call by pet names, from hypo- + korizesthai to caress, from koros boy, korē girl):
"a pet name"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypocorism
(B) -uccio (Italian suffix): "Diminutive suffix used to form adjectives and nouns, often with pejorative connotations. Example: femminuccia, from femmina. [Italian noun feminine, for 'female']"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-uccio


(c) photo caption: "A tashi gomang stupa at Densatil with the guardians of the four directions in the foreground: Dhritarashtra, Virudhaka, Virupaksha and Vaishravana. Courtesy of Ulrich von Schroeder"
(i) Research Project on the Sculptural Art of Densatil ("Research Project Densatil"  for short)
www.densatil.org/index.html

Please read, as listed in the index in the left column:
* Description of the Project
* The Monastery of Densatil  (In the region of Densatil "in 1198 a great council took place bringing together some of the main pupils of Phagmo trupa. They decided to build a monastery around the famous grass-hut of their beloved teacher. This monastery became known as Densatil.")
* What is a Tashigomang?
(ii)
(A) tashi
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tashi
(also spelt trashi; is a Tibetan word meaning "good fortune" or "auspiciousness" which figures prominently in many names of places and people)
(B) tashi delek
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tashi_delek
(a Tibetan greeting; section 1 Origin and meaning)


(d) "such accounts drive home just how amazing it is that enough has survived for the Asia Society Museum to mount its aptly named 'Golden Visions of Densatil.' With some 40 sculptures and reliefs and a half-dozen paintings, the show brings to life Densatil's most distinctive contribution: 14th- and 15th-century tiered, square shrines known as tashi gomang, or 'Many Doors of Auspiciousness,' stupas. Set on a circular base, they are made of gilded copper alloy and rise 14 to 16 feet with 2,800 to more than 3,900 figures, from gem-studded deities to lively dancers and musicians."

Hard to visualize "tiered, square shrines [or] stupas[, s]et on a circular base." Yet it will be manifest when viewing the photo in  "Description of the Project" in (c)(i) above.

(e) "Their genesis was a monk's vision, and we see an interpretation of it in a painting made sometime in the late 19th to early 20th century. We also meet at the start of the show two men central to Densatil's history. A small 15th-century painting depicts Phagmo Drupa [spelled 'Trupa' in (c)(i)] Dorje Gyalpo (1110-1170), a monk who found in the remote Phagmodru—'Sow Crossing'—an ideal place to meditate. A stocky fellow with a round face and a wide, toothy smile, he comes across as the sort of open-hearted man who would attract devoted followers. After his death, they remained and built a monastery. Among these followers was Jigten Gonpo (1143-1217), whom a small 13th-century sculpture portrays with sober demeanor. Jigten Gonpo was the monk who later had the vision and hired skilled Newari artists from Nepal to translate it into reality at the nearby Drigung monastery. Completed about 1208, this first stupa was most likely destroyed within a century during a war between competing schools of Tibetan Buddhism. But the vision lived on at Densatil, where, from 1270 through the 1430s, monks and wealthy patrons adopted the Drigung prototype and erected eight such structures."
(i) For Newari, see Newa people
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newa_people
(ii) Drigung Moastery  直贡梯寺
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drigung_Monastery
(high in the Himalayan mountains (4,150m); The monastery is named after its location in a valley about 150 km east from Lhasa, in Drigung district; After being destroyed by Communists following the takeover of Tibet in 1959, reconstruction work began in 1980)


(f) "When Olaf Czaja of the University of Leipzig began investigating these tashi gomang stupas, he relied on Mele's Densatil photographs—of which no more than 15 have surfaced—and one other vital piece of information: a detailed description of the Drigung stupa and its consecration. Armed with these, he reconstructed the stupas' strict iconographic program, which is reflected in the way he and Asia Society Museum co-curator Adriana Proser organized the show. We thus first encounter the protective deities that filled the lowest level. They include a 2-foot-tall guardian dressed in a gem-studded robe, fierce goddesses with skull necklaces, and Nagarajas, serpent kings identifiable by the snakes rising from their crowns. The next groupings feature the icons that filled the next four tiers, from offering goddesses—including a magnificent 14th-century Parnashavari, or 'Dressed in Leaves'—to increasingly sacred Buddhas and Tantric deities. At the summit rises a pinnacle-shaped stupa housing the cremains of a revered abbot. Incidentally, letters on the backs of panels and statuary told artisans exactly what went where."
(i)
(A) Nagaraja
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagaraja
(is a Tamil word from naga (snake) and raja (king) meaning "king of snakes")
(B) A statuette of Nagaraja is displayed in (a).
(ii) Parnashavari can be seen in images.google.com.

(g) "Was there a model in Tibet or Nepal for the two-sided caryatidlike pillars with four-armed deities on either side? They are ingenious: Two arms hold up the capital, leaving two arms free for graceful and symbolic gestures. And do the works we see here belong to a 'Densatil style'?"
(i) caryatid
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caryatid
(The Greek term karyatides literally means "maidens of Karyai", an ancient town of Peloponnese)
(ii) For "capital," see column
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column
(section 2.1 Nomenclature)