The Way to Nirvana

Nepalese art, in the historical sense, was born yesterday. For the ancient kingdom of Nepal, hemmed in as it was by the highest Himalayas, remained largely cut off from the outside world until a road to its capital of Katmandu was opened ten years ago. The first scholar to study its art thoroughly was a University of Pennsylvania professor named Stella Kramrisch, who, after 25 years in India, spent six months there in 1962. The Nepalese were truly grateful, for, until she came, they had no idea what was great art and what was not.

Buddha died only 30 miles from Katmandu. So nearly all of Nepal's art is religious in subject matter, representing a jumbled pantheon of gods drawn from Hindu and Buddhist myths. Some of the art Professor Kramrisch dug out of muddy ditches; some she found in temples. Next week in Manhattan's Asia House, the world gets its first comprehensive look at the sculpture, paintings and manuscripts that she picked. Though the exhibition spans 15 centuries, the works are neither curios of folkways nor dusty museum pieces. They are living idols.

Eternal Luster. In a devout send-off for the idol of Avalokiteshvara, Lord of Compassion (see opposite page), Nepalese monks sprinkled it with holy vermilion powder and packed it in flowers before sending it off to New York. The cast bronze has swelling contours that are not obscured by excessive ornamentation, with as much easy stylization and graceful gesture as the sculpted saints of the contemporary Gothic in Europe. Avalokiteshvara has one advantage to delight a sculptor: he comes in 108 different incarnations. Nepalese sculptors were equally adept at hammering out fully rounded copper-gilt figures from inside. Fond of rich materials, they cast sinuous sculpture in bronze, then fire-gilded it to an eternal luster.

Nepal became a stronghold of late Buddhism and its imagery when it retreated from Islam, which swept through India during the 12th century. Sequestered in the Himalayas, the religion existed in one of its headiest forms short of Zen--Tantric Buddhism. Its credo begins with the Adi-Buddha, a primordial god of ultimate beauty.

In turn, man may aspire to personal Buddhahood through ridding himself of such worldly attachments as family and his ego. Between god and man are the bodhisattvas (or saints), who have nobly rejected nirvana (or the utter annihilation of self) to minister to the needs of mankind. Also in between are the yidams, bristling with many pairs of arms brandishing weapons, who are often sensuously pictured in copulation with their female consorts to symbolize the final union in Buddhahood where the sexes blend together. Nepalese art not only revolves around this Oriental theology but also helps the individual attain it.

Bowl & Blood. In many religions, man uses icons to guide his meditations. Nepalese cloth paintings often contain mandalas, magic diagrams of the cosmos without and the self within. One such (see opposite page) focuses on the mighty mediating god, Mahakala, whose blue bulk is crowned and garlanded with severed heads. The worshiper is expected to make a visual pilgrim's progress from the edges of the mandala, where he buries his worldliness in stylized cemeteries showing scenes of torture and immolation. Four godlings representing the cardinal compass points help him purge external reality. At the center Mahakala waits, clutching ritual symbols of self-annihilation: a skull bowl brimming with frothy blood and a chopping knife.

The results for the devout Tantric Buddhist are frenzies of mystical ecstasy. By absorbing the image entirely so that the mind can re-create and understand its every detail, the worshiper has transcended all life, even the image, and is well on his way to nirvana--leaving his art behind.

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