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On the mud walls of monasteries and temples around Mustang in Nepal lies a world of painting, writes B. N. Goswamy
Till not long ago, I had associated the name ‘Mustang’ only with a horse — the dictionary describes it precisely as "a small, hardy horse of the American plains, descended from Spanish stock" —, or with one of the most successful automobiles sporting that name which the Ford company launched some 50 years ago. I had little idea then that there was, in Nepal, right on its border with Tibet, also an ancient kingdom now bearing that name and going back almost to 1000 years. And it still survives, having outlived major upheavals over the centuries, in the midst of a lunar landscape virtually untouched by outsiders but magnificently carved out by the elements. Anyone who has been to the area speaks of its high altitude desert-like appearance, with yellow, ochre and grey hills, and awe-inspiring mountains all around, something of ‘a giant Grand Canyon surrounded by icy peaks and criss-crossed by thundering rivers’. By all accounts, to get to Lo Manthang, the capital town of Mustang, one has to travel on foot or horseback ‘through an elemental world of sand, rock and wind’. But once one gets there, one can be sure of being transported to a different sphere, a different plane of being. For there, in and around Mustang, there are monasteries and temples in which on mud-walls and inside caves a brilliant world of painting breathes: an art of the mind in which colours seem to explode before the very eyes of the viewer. Culturally and ethnically, Mustang belongs to the Tibetan world but it has remained a part of Nepal. In fact, in the 1960s, when the Chinese unleashed their brutal ‘Cultural Revolution’ upon Tibet, in the course of which countless monasteries were razed and priceless art destroyed, the area served as a base for the Khampas who waged a long but futile guerrilla war against the Chinese. Fortunately, however, Mustang and its art treasures were on this side of the border, and thus in Nepal. The Nepalese Government closed the area down in those troubled times and made it inaccessible to outsiders. It was only 15 years back in 1992 that the region was opened up again. And that is when the magnificence of the art of the Mustang region broke through the clouds of unknowing and shone upon a disbelieving world. Several expeditions to the region have, of late, been undertaken by scholars and restorers; treks to the Mustang region are now standard fare offered to hardy tourists visiting Nepal; publications focussing upon the great wall paintings keep appearing. The world is waking up to the treasures of Mustang. The two gompas — vihara-like establishments — of Thubchen and Jampa, both going back to the 15th century, were listed in 1996 in the World Monuments Fund’s first annual watch list of 100 Most Endangered Sites representing the world’s cultural heritage. For here, in the art of these places, as Philip and Marcia Lieberman say, "wild, unearthly beings stand poised to leap, caught in a frozen moment of dance, by the side of Buddhas sitting motionless in the remote serenity of profound meditation. An invisible universe, a meta-reality, proclaims itself on mud walls where, five centuries ago, artists painted a truth seen only by the mind". There is so much to read and write about Mustang, for the excitement of discovery has become attached to the region. Briefly, however: the capital, Lo Manthang, (seen in the image that accompanies this piece) — named after the native Lo-ba people who speak a dialect of Tibetan — is a relatively small walled town situated on a flat plateau behind which magnificent mountains, bare of vegetation, loom. The two temples in the town, barely a 100 m apart from each other, house, however, monumental images of the Buddhas and rich, jewel-like paintings: the work of Newari artists — whose style almost defines the art of Nepal and who were inspired by Pala paintings from India in turn — completed some 500 years back: well before Leonardo da Vinci painted his Last Supper, as an Italian restorer remarked. The restoration teams had to be called in from Europe, mostly from Italy, because the paintings in the temples needed serious work, having been almost covered with centuries of soot from butter-lamp smoke, and grime, and water. But it was only after the art of the region became public knowledge, so to speak. Not many from outside had seen these works before 1992. The inveterate Italian researcher, Tucci, was one of the few who had been there, as early as 1952: but he feared that they were soon going to be lost forever. They have survived, however. And while work on the known treasures becomes more and more intense as years roll by, more and more discoveries are being made in the region. One reads of the
discovery, thus, as late as 2007, of what is now being called the Snow
Leopard Cave, at an altitude of some 3400 m, in the very mountains
that one sees in the backdrop of the town of Lo Monthang. As many as
55 wall paintings have been discovered there going back to the 12th
century. But access to them is not a simple matter. Anyone who has
been there, having negotiated rocky knife-like ridges and perilous
ledges, recalls the ‘death-defying’ approaches over ‘fluted,
organ-pipe spires and pinnacles’. Several researchers are known to
have given up their attempts; Gary McCue, who led teams into the Tashi
Kabum and Luri caves — which look from a distance like holes in a
barren escarpment — has written about crawling on his belly ‘through
a short passage barely the width of my shoulders’ for entering one
of the caves. And yet the wonder of it all — and this is what faith
can do — is that here, in these almost inaccessible caverns, monks
once lived, circumambulating sacred stupas; devotees gathered, eyes
lit with ardour; and artists from far off kept working, painting
mystic diagrams, creating seductive illusions, exploring the inner
selves of lithe and graceful beings, "solemn in their beauty,
archangels of the spirit".
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