Eight Great Mahasiddhas (HAR 65170)

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-12

[00:00:05]Welcome to Himalayan Art Resources. My name is Jeff Watt.

[00:00:09]Today we're going to look at a a very small uh treasure of the Rubin Museum of Art.

[00:00:15]It's hard number 65170.

[00:00:19]And uh this we purchased When did we purchase this?

[00:00:24]We purchased this early on. I think it was 2001.

[00:00:28]Uh early 2002.

[00:00:30]And um it's a small drawing and it has depictions of the eight great Mahasiddhas.

[00:00:40]And what's special about it is the quality of the drawing. It's done in a Pal pung style.

[00:00:46]It has no color. It it's just um uh black basically black ink uh on cloth and the cloth even appears to be um for the most part is ungrounded, which is quite unusual.

[00:01:02]Um and the the Mahasiddhas are are typical for the Karma Kagyu system. So what we have is we have Nagarjuna, Indrabhuti, Dombi Heruka, Saraha, Ghantapa, Kukkuripa, Luipa, and Padmavajra. Now when I say typical, I mean typical from a late period, not an early period. In the early period then Virupa would also be there and um there would be some others.

[00:01:31]But what's uh fascinating about this painting uh or this drawing is just its um its tremendous detail. It's its complexity, its detail.

[00:01:43]Also, from this drawing we can see many different painting compositions which are related to it. And this is coming from the 18th century. So this is really from the period of uh Situ Panchen Chokyi Jungne. This is when this whole Palpung style of painting was developed, which Situ called his own style or his new style.

[00:02:07]And uh this this drawing is is a wonderful example of that. Now, also what we we did, the hard team, we were able back in 2003, we were able to find a text in um Eastern Tibet. It was a Jonang text written by Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen.

[00:02:28]He lived 1292 to 1361.

[00:02:32]And we discovered that there was a a text he wrote um in a in a cave actually when he was in retreat, the Keypuk retreat cave, and it was on uh on the morning uh where there's a clear sky and he had a he had a vision um within a kind of a rainbow of the eight great Mahasiddhas with the Vajradhara, the primordial Buddha Vajradhara. And uh what's absolutely fascinating is is his prayer that he wrote or this praise to the eight great Mahasiddhas is almost identical to the painting that we're looking at as well as it's the same figures. So, most important is it's the same figures, the same list of eight because there's many different lists of eight great Mahasiddhas depending on what tradition tradition you belong to or what what time period chronologically when in that in that tradition um are they uh creating different lists or or or substituting different Mahasiddhas which a particular teacher finds more important at at a particular time.

[00:03:40]Um so, it's a moving list.

[00:03:43]So, what's fascinating here is the Dolpopa text of the Jonang tradition uh fits very well with this painting. It also fits very well at a time when Kunga Drolchok Norbu and Situ Panchen Chokyi Gyaltsen have a very, very great interest in reviving and promoting the Jonangpa tradition, which had been severely cut back and and damaged by politics of Central Tibet. So, we'll leave it there. You can press like, you can subscribe.

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