EASTERN TIBET, PALPUNG STYLE, 18TH-EARLY 19TH CENTURY

This fine and rare painting depicts The Account of the Noble Deeds of Srisena, one of the one hundred and eight avadana stories from Leaves of the Heaven Tree, a text composed in the eleventh century by the Kashmiri poet Kshemendra. In contrast to the jatakas, which were stories focused on the past lives of the Buddha Shakyamuni, the avadanas were tales related by the Buddha and which concerned the deeds of other virtuous people. In style and composition, the present painting is closely related to a series of avadana paintings from Palpung Monastery designed by Situ Panchen Chokyi Jungne (1700-1774); the open landscape with high horizon line interspersed with small vignettes telling the avadana tales are characteristic of Situ Panchen’s style. However, there is a marked difference between the present painting and the corpus of known Situ Panchen avadana paintings: the present work depicts just a single tale, that of The Noble Deeds of Srisena, which is considered to be the second story of the one hundred and eight, while the Situ Panchen paintings typically depict a handful of stories in each painting. The corresponding painting in the Situ Panchen set, an example of which is illustrated on Himalayan Art Resources, item no. 41005, depicts the first three stories of Leaves of the Heaven Tree (The Awakening of King Prabhasa; The Generosity of King Srisena; and King Manicuda’s Perfection of Giving).
Following the Palpung style, the painting depicts multiple moments from Srisena’s story as vignettes spread throughout the overall composition. As the subject of the story and the focus of reverence, Srisena is depicted throughout with his skin painted in gold, distinguishing him from the other figures in the painting. The various scenes show him orating to the people of his kingdom on the tenets of the dharma and on the importance of generosity, or relating stories from his past life when he even gave up parts of his body for the survival of animals or fellow humans. The most notable scene, and one that is used in the Situ Panchen series to encapsulate the entire tale, is found in the lower left, when Srisena ordered his followers to cut off his lower body to give to Shakra, the ruler of the Trayatrimsha Heaven, in the guise of a Brahmin who had lost the lower half of his body in a tiger attack; although suffering extreme pain and torture, Srisena was eventually revived by Shakra after demonstrating his virtue. The lower left hand corner depicts a scene where a past incarnation of Srisena sacrificed his life to feed a starving tigress and her cubs, a tale very similar to a popular jataka, thus demonstrating his comparable merit to the Buddha himself.
The fact that only a single avadana tale is depicted in the present painting suggests it may have been part of a much larger set than the set of twenty-three paintings as composed by Situ Panchen, possibly as large as one hundred and eight, with one painting per story. Although no other paintings from this theoretical set are at this time known, it leaves open the possibility that other as yet unidentified works can be attributed to the present work.