The spiritual quest of the Buddha in the Dungkar cave temple – Indian sources and Western Tibetan image-making. Part 1: the narrative cycle from Tuṣita heaven up to the Enlightenment

Résumé En Fr

The case study identifies and analyses the detailed depiction of the story of the life of the Buddha up to the Enlightenment in the early Western Trans-Himalayan Buddhist temple of Dungkar. It examines the relation between image and text, asseses the art-historical context, and explores the narrative modes. Comparative investigations based on multi-sited and multi-disciplinary research in historical Western Tibet (Tsamda/Ngari, Spiti, and Ladakh) show that the designers of the visual programmes at each of these sites developed different solutions of cycles based on textual sources and also visual models have been used in various ways.

Cette étude identifie et analyse la représentation détaillée de l’histoire de la vie du Bouddha jusqu’à l’Illumination dans le temple trans-himalayen occidental de Dungkar. Elle examine les traditions artistiques et explore les modes narratifs. Une analyse comparative basée sur une recherche multi-disciplinaire à travers plusieurs sites du Tibet occidental historique (Tsamda/Ngari, Spiti et Ladakh) montre, qu’à chacun de ces sites, les concepteurs des programmes visuels ont developpé, à partir des sources textuelles, différentes solutions de cycles iconographiques.