An inscribed silver and copper inlaid copper alloy figure of Lowo Khenchen Sonam Lhundrup, Tibet, 16th century

Collection of Jack (1926-2017) and Muriel (1929-2019) Zimmerman, acquired prior to 1973.

Upstairs/Downstairs in a Tibetan Monastery: The Zimmerman Family Collection, Brooklyn Museum, New York 1976.

Tibet. Kunst des Buddhismus, Haus der Kunst, Munich, 1977, cat. no. 153.

Dieux et démons de l’Himâlaya, Grand Palais, Paris, 1977, cat. no. 152.

Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, IBM Gallery of Science and Art, New York, Royal Academy of Art, London, Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn; Fundacio “la Ciaxa”, Barcelona; Tobu Museum of Art, Tokyo; Yamaguchi Prefectural Museum of Art, Yamaguchi; Chiba City Museum of Art; and China Times Culture Center, Taipei, 1998, cat. no. 63.

Jeanne Auboyer, Tibet. Kunst des Buddhismus, Haus der Kunst, Munich, 1977, cat. no. 153.

Jeanne Auboyer and Gilles Béguin, Dieux et démons de l’Himâlaya, Grand Palais, Paris, 1977, cat. no. 152.

Marylin M. Rhie and Robert A. F. Thurman, Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet, expanded edition, New York, 2000, cat. no. 63.

LOWO KHENCHEN SONAM LHUNDRUP, THE GREAT ABBOT OF MUSTANG

Dr Yannick Laurent

The present sculpture depicts the Great Abbot of Mustang, Lowo Khenchen Sönam Lhündrup (1456–1532), one of the most eminent religious and intellectual figures of the Sakya-Ngor tradition during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Born into the ruling house of Mustang in Highland Nepal, Sönam Lhündrup (Tib. bsod nams lhun grub) exemplifies the close association between religious authority and political power that characterized the region in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. From an early age destined for a religious career, he rose to become the Great Abbot of Mustang and presided over major monastic institutions strategically located along trans-Himalayan trade routes linking the Tibetan Plateau with the Indian subcontinent. These routes not only facilitated economic exchange but also fostered the circulation of religious ideas, texts, and artistic models. Beyond his institutional authority, Sönam Lhündrup was a prolific and influential scholar. His extensive corpus of writings, most notably his commentaries on the works of Sakya Paṇḍita (1182–1251), made a lasting contribution to the intellectual life of the Sakya school. His career thus illustrates the role of Mustang as a dynamic center of Buddhist learning, patronage, and artistic production within the western Himalayas.

The abbot is represented according to the well-established iconography that assimilates him to Manjusri, the bodhisattva of wisdom. A flaming sword rises from a lotus flower on his right, while a volume of the Prajnaparamita rests on a lotus flower to his left, attributes that underscore his status as an accomplished scholar and authoritative interpreter of Buddhist doctrine. The right hand is held in the wish-granting gesture (varadamudra), while the left hand holds a single flaming jewel, itself a potent wish-fulfilling symbol. More often than not, portraits of the Great Abbot depict him with the left hand in the gesture of argumentation (vitarkamudra), emphasizing his role as a teacher and debater. In the present image, however, the emphasis is clearly placed on the capacity to grant and realize wishes, an aspect that is further reinforced by the content and phrasing of the dedicatory inscription.

His monastic robe is lavishly decorated with vegetal scrolls and floral motifs executed in copper and silver inlay, a technically demanding process involving the insertion of contrasting metals into carefully carved recesses on the surface of the bronze. Beyond the treatment of textiles and ornamental elements, copper and silver inlay are also used to articulate key physiognomic details, including the eyes, lips, and fingernails. This polychrome inlay technique is well attested in bronze sculptures produced in Mustang and western Tibet during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and constitutes a characteristic feature of regional metalwork. It is frequently employed to differentiate textures, highlight iconographic details, and confer a heightened level of refinement on devotional images. Comparable applications of copper and silver inlay are documented on other portraits of the Great Abbot as well as on related sculptures from the region, pointing to the existence of specialized workshops proficient in this technique.

Sculptures of the Great Abbot of Mustang are among the most widely produced portraits of a Tibetan Buddhist master and testify to a growing concern for portraiture in Tibetan and Himalayan bronze sculpture. These images typically present the abbot in his later years as a sturdy, pot-bellied man with a stern and austere facial expression. His physiognomy is readily recognizable, notably through his receding hairline and long sideburns. The present sculpture conforms to this established visual type yet departs slightly from the more pronounced naturalism observed in closely studied portraits such as the well-known image preserved in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and attributed to the master artist Namkha Drak (Tib. nam mkha’ grags), who must have known the abbot personally. In comparison, the facial features here appear slightly more idealized, suggesting a work produced after the death of the abbot in 1532 and relying on established portrait conventions that had crystallized around his image in the decades immediately following his passing.

A Tibetan dedicatory inscription runs along the lower rim of the pedestal. It closely aligns with inscriptions documented in Mustang on other portraits of the Great Abbot. The text is composed as a versified stanza with nine syllables per line and is framed by devotional and auspicious Sanskrit formulae written in Tibetan script. The abbot is identified by name and presented as a guiding figure and object of refuge for beings ensnared in the cycle of saṃsāra. The dedicatory inscription reads as follows:

༄། ༀ་སྭ་སྟི་སྭི་དྷྃ། འགྲོ་བའི་མགོན་པོ་བསོད་ནམ་ལྷུན་འགྲུབ་ལ། དཔོན་དྲུང་སྒྲོལ་

མ་ཡབ་ཡུམ་འཁོར་བཅས་རྣམས། སྒོ་གསུྃ་པ་ཆེནོའི་སྐྱབསུ་མཆི། མཆོག་དང་ཐུན་མོང་དངོས་འགྲུབ་ཙལཏུ་

གསོལ་ མཾགྷལྃ།

Oṃ svasti siddhaṃ!

In Sönam Lhündrup, the lord of migratory beings,

Pöndrung Drölma, together with yab yum and retinue

Take refuge with great reverence through the three doors (i.e., body, speech and mind).

We beseech you to grant us superior and ordinary spiritual attainments.

Maṅgalaṃ!

The donative nature of the inscription provides insight into the expectations of the patrons who commissioned the image in order to obtain spiritual attainments (Skt. siddhi) through a meritorious act, while at the same time raising a number of unresolved questions regarding their identity. The donors are named as Pöndrung Drölma, yab yum, together with their retinue. This formulation admits several possible readings. As previously proposed, the phrase may be understood as “Pöndrung Drölma, husband and wife, together with their retinue,” in which case yab yum is taken in its occasional sense of “husband and wife,” and Pöndrung Drölma would designate a male donor. Alternatively, the same wording may be read as “Pöndrung Drölma, father and mother, together with their retinue,” in which case the parents of Pöndrung Drölma would be included among the donors. The ambiguity rests on the dual meaning of the Tibetan expression yab yum, which most commonly denotes “father and mother,” but is at times also used to signify a married couple. The interpretation is further complicated by the personal name Drölma, which is overwhelmingly borne by women, though rare masculine attestations are known, as well as by the term pöndrung (Tib. dpon drung), which may function either as a personal name or as a title indicating social or administrative standing. The mention of a “retinue” (Tib. ’khor) adds a further layer of ambiguity, as the term is deliberately broad and may encompass a court or entourage, disciples, or members of an extended family, rather than implying a formally constituted group. Taken together, these factors leave open several possibilities: whether the principal donor was male or female; whether pöndrung refers to an official position held within the local community; and whether the commission was undertaken jointly with a spouse or in association with one’s parents. The inscription thus resists a definitive identification of the donors at this stage, while nevertheless pointing to a family or household of some social prominence acting collectively as patrons.

A minor yet noteworthy peculiarity of the inscription lies in the engraver’s use of two different signs for the anusvāra, an abbreviation of the first suffixed letter ma. Alongside the conventional circle, the candrabindu or “moon dot” diacritic sign is also employed. The candrabindu (Tib. zla tshig) is graphically distinct from the more common anusvāra sign written as a small circle. It ultimately derives from Indic scripts, where it marks nasalization, and entered Tibetan writing through the transmission of Sanskrit orthography, particularly in mantras and dhāraṇī. Although the reason for this idiosyncratic usage remains unclear, it likely reflects individual scribal or workshop practice and may assist in the future identification of other works produced by the same workshop.

On the basis of the treatment of Sönam Lhündrup’s facial features and the specific inlay techniques employed, this bronze portrait of the Great Abbot may be conservatively attributed to Mustang and dated to the sixteenth century.

References

https://treasuryoflives.org/biographies/view/Lowo-Khenchen-Sonam-Lhundrub/10497

Kramer, Jowita. 2008. A Noble Abbot from Mustang: Life and Works of Glo-bo mKhan-chen (1456–1532). Vienna: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien, Universität Wien.

Kramer, Jowita and Christian Luczanits. 2023. “A Royal Teacher and an Artist”. In Karl Debreczeny and Elena Pakhoutova (eds.) Himalayan Art in 108 Objects. New York: Rubin Museum of Art in association with Scala Arts Publishers, 277–279.

Khokhlov, Yury and Yannick Laurent. 2020. “Nam mkha’ grags and the Three Silver Brothers: A Sixteenth-Century ‘Divine Artist’ from Western Tibet”. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Tibetan Archaeology and Art, Part II. Journal of Tibetology 22: 236–274.