La Vie de l'enfant Padma 'od-'bar : du texte à l'image

Résumé En

The Life of the Child Padma 'od-'bar : from the text to the painted image. The play, the Life of the Child Padma 'od-'bar is very popular amongst the Tibetan people. Apart from the " libretti ", proper to each theatrical company, several written versions have been published, though these come down to two main ones, the first published in Kalimpong in 1959, and the second in Lhasa in 1982. Furthermore, the same narrative is related by the itinerant storytellers, the mani-pas, who illustrate their story by showing details from the scenes of a thangka. A comparison between four of these paintings shows that, beyond stylistic differences, a large homogeneity exists in their composition. One may wonder whether this homogeneity is the result of a common geographical origin, which may link them to a school from Khams. Putting the texts and paintings side by side, it becomes clear that — apart from a few details — all the scenes in the paintings faithfully follow the texts. Nevertheless, it is necessary to combine both written versions in order to get a complete " reading " of the thangkas. This fact suggests that the two modern versions are incomplete, and that it would be useful to find a more ancient text. Thus we have a further example of « narrative » painting very precisely linked to a text. Yet, contrary to other such paintings, previously studied, those illustrating the life of Padma 'od-'bar lack strictness in their composition, since the progress of the story sometimes requires the reader to jump in disorder from one place to another. If one adds the naive technique used in three out of four of these thangkas, one may ask whether this might not be considered as a criterion for identifying the paintings used by the mani-pas. Finally, this example, following others, prompts one to look to literary sources as the probable origin of the so-called " narrative " paintings.