Dionysian Drunk Scene, Doubling Back

 

Dionysos with his Thyrsos on his Panther
By Unknown author - from Le Musée absolu, Phaidon, 10-2012, Public Domain

After a night of very serious drinking, far past the time reasonable people would have rolled off their couches in the triclinium and stumbled home, two strong young men helped the tipsy old man Silenus go outside and get up on his ass. This may have been the true source of the expression, “Drunk off my ass,” you think? Never understood that phrase, and anyway, it turns out the ass wasn’t the only animal Silenus rode on. 

When my copy of Ben Abed's Tunisian Mosaics arrived from the online used bookstore, it immediately opened up to page 199, where a well-preserved (thanks to overzealous preservationists?) mosaic vividly depicts a Dionysian procession. There, bringing up the rear, who could it be but Silenus, naked but bearded, his drinking implements on either side, ready to slide right off the side of his camel! Drunk off his camel? Get my point? There’s that camel again. Where have we seen that before?

Detail from the Dionysian Procession — El Jem, Tunisia

Meanwhile I at last received, with gratitude to its authors, an offprint of a very significant article I had mentioned in the more recent blog on the subject, “Who Is that Drunken Man?” even though I hadn’t read it yet, an article by Valenstein et al. Now that I have read it, I'm fairly convinced that the person I had taken to be Herakles ought to be seen for who he really is, Silenus. And what is that drunken man doing there on the saddlebags of that camel in Chang’an?

I learned from Rina Talgam’s splendid and informative book that the Dionysian room at Sepphoris in the Galilee was a kind of choice of patterns you could have been offered by mosaic makers back in those days. Its prototype was likely in Antakya, ancient Antioch, near the southern Turkish coast. It was one of the three or four largest cities in the late Roman empire. I’ll give you some links on Dionysus in Antioch below. The Galilean “Dionysian room” is most renowned for the bit of it that shows a woman’s face, so attractive it is often compared to the Mona Lisa.... 

But let’s force ourselves to turn our heads and look at another minor part of the mosaic in the same room.

Here below is a photo of “methe” or ‘drunkenness’ normally labelled as Herakles, although I see no clear signs of this identity, and it could just as well be Silenus. I wonder, are people taking the long brown object that seems to be falling off a pedestal to be a club that would establish his Herculean identity? I’m not saying I see it, just questioning if anyone else does. If it is a club and if it's his club, he’s totally lost it.

"Drunkenness." Said to be Herakles. Sepphoris, Galilee 
I took this photo

To keep the story short, reining in my urge to teeter and meander, I now feel more sure that the drunken man depicted on the side of the Jokhang jug is Silenus, not Hercules, and this argument is to my mind fairly clinched by the fact that the Jokhang jug has a camel-head spout. We have observed that Silenus goes with a camel on both sides of Tibet, in Chang’an in the east and from there all the way west to the northern coast of Africa at El Jem, or about 8,528 kilometers distant. That’s a whole lot of mileage.* But as Silenus and Hercules both are drunken figures of significance to the Dionysian cult, I doubt it makes enough difference to impress anyone with how important it is, particularly for anyone already seeing double. So, my friends, I will leave it at this for now. Cheers!

(*It’s said packed camels travel about 25 miles a day, so at around 5,300 miles, that would take about 212 days. Just guesstimating, no way you should think about trying it... unless you’re drunker than I was thinking.)

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Investigate some more

Aïcha Ben Abed, Tunisian Mosaics: Treasures from Roman Africa, Getty Publications (Los Angeles 2006).

Lawrence Becker & Christine Kondoleon, eds., The Arts of Antioch: Art Historical and Scientific Approaches to Roman Mosaics and a Catalogue of the Worcester Art Museum Antioch Collection, Worcester Art Museum (Worcester 2005), especially pp. 27-28, 178-181.

The Antakya mosaic of the drinking contest ended up, through circumstances described in this book, in a museum in Massachusetts. There is much good information in this book, sometimes too much ”science“ to suit my taste, but one thing that does bother me is its unconvincing repetition of that boring idea that the Dionysian mosaic is supposed to be a moral plea for moderation. Just because some other Greek discussed moderation doesn’t make it relevant here, because if there was any place where Greeks threw rationalistic moderation out the window to the winds it was in the cult of Dionysus. It’s as if the work of art (or an essay for that matter) can only justify its creation if it makes its consumers better fit into the moral order they’re confined within, that they are trapped by. As if all art and literature has to share the aims of the new Puritans, enjoyment be damned. For entertainment purposes if nothing else, see the interesting takedown of post-colonialist literary productions by Sumana Roy in the February 18, 2021 Chronicle of Higher Education, an essay entitled “The Problem with the Postcolonial Syllabus: Against a Peculiarly Western Allergy to the Pleasure of the Text.” Tibetan studies, too, has lately exhibited signs it might succumb to the narcissistic exploration of the (supposedly “post-”) colonialist self, conveniently doing away with all necessity to learn a second language while securing a respectable job in the academy... blah blah blah blah ... Is that just me indulging in my own form of virtue signaling? You be the judge. I have no doubt you will!

G.W. Bowersock, Mosaics as History: The Near East from Late Antiquity to Islam, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (Cambridge 2006). 

This book really impressed on me how culturally important Antioch was in late antiquity. It does have a brief treatment on the Dionysian mosaic in the triclinium of a wealthy family’s house in Sepphoris in the Galilee (one archaeologist, Ze’ev Weiss, says he believes it was home to a Jewish high priest).

Örgü Dalgiç, “The Triumph of Dionysos in Constantinople: A Late Fifth-Century Mosaic in Context,” Dunbarton Oaks Papers, vol. 69 (2015), pp. 15-48. 

This has some marvelous examples of processional scenes. One of them has Silenus drunk on his ass (or, as it says, a mule). There’s also a nice one of Dionysos as a child riding on a goat. A Gandharan frieze shows the Sage of Shakya as a child riding on a ram on his way to his first day in school that is at least equally charming. Another important and much-depicted episode shared by the two heroic beings is the giving of a bath, and in each case it seems to correspond to or inspire cultic enactments in actual practice.

Dionysius as a child, riding on a goat
(I took this photo)

E. Gruber & J. Dobbins, “Illuminating Historical Architecture: The House of the Drinking Contest at Antioch,” contained in: F. Contreras, et al., eds., Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (2010), pp. 71-76.

Hava Sevillia-Sadeh, “Heracles’ Drunkenness in the Sepphoris Mosaic: Debasement or Consecration?” [in Hebrew]  Cathedra, vol. 127 (2008), pp. 5-32. 

Thanks to Y.B. for her help, as my own language skills are not up to it, but this article is worthy of attention precisely for disagreeing with those experts who keep on saying that the image of Heracles drunk bears a moral message encouraging temperance or at least moderation. The drunken Heracles depiction doesn't mean to tell us, as many have also argued, that there was a Dionysian rivalry with the cult of Hercules. Instead, it wants to tell us that Heracles reached the ultimate aim of the Dionysian cult, the state of complete and total self-abandonment to ecstatic transcendence. It may even explain how he could be turned into a god. Well, I guess technically he was a half-god all along, and was only made a complete god after his death.

Rina Talgam, Mosaics of Faith: Floors of Pagans, Jews, Samaritans, Christians, and Muslims in the Holy Land, Yad Ben-Zvi Press (Jerusalem 2014). 

This has a very extensive explanation of the House of Dionysos at Sepphoris at pp. 27-43. The whole book has color photographs of mosaics on almost every page. Here is an emphasis on the “moral” to the drinking contest, which is: Herakles is the strongest, most able man in the world, so strong he could become a god, but unlike Dionysos he just can’t handle his drink. So he's a model for moderation.  Hmmm, ironic, isn’t it, that the normal image of Dionysian cult is one big party its whole point being to get stupid drunk, dance across the countryside with wild abandon, vomit and pass out. And now they’re supposed to be supplying us with role models for moderation.

R. Talgam & Z. Weiss, “The Mosaics of the House of Dionysos at Sepphoris,” Qedem, vol. 44 (2004), pp. 1-136 plus illustrations.

Suzanne G. Valenstein with Annette L. Juliano and Judith A. Lerner, ”Hellenism in Sui-Tang Chang’an: Dionysiac Imagery on Mortuary Camels,” New Research on Central Asian, Buddhist and Far Eastern Art and Archaeology (a special issue of Inner and Central Asian Art and Archaeology, vol. 2), Brepols (Turnhout 2019), pp. 319-334. Thanks to Amy for pointing this out and helping me get access.

Overview of the Triclinium floor in Sepphoris
with Dionysian scenes 
(photo by myself, click to enlarge)

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Online

If you need to go over the issues surrounding the Jokhang jug, you should look back at the on-line 2002 article by Amy Heller.  It evoked a further discussion in 2009 by Ulrich von Schoeder and Joachim Karsten that you can see here.

“The Drinking Contest of Dionysos and Heracles.” — https://www.worcesterart.org/collection/Ancient/1933.36.html

“Mosaic Pavement: Drinking Contest of Herakles and Dionysos, Early 3rd Century A.D.”  — https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/29551

El Jem (Thysdrus): 

https://www.romeartlover.it/Thysdru2.html

The Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTxGwJqY7Ns&ab_channel=MikeH

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEzDiejb1a0&ab_channel=Smarthistory

Mosaics at Zeugma:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-iZ5wqRe-8&ab_channel=FacesofAncientEurope

There is also a “Triumph of Dionysus” procession scene in the “House of Dionysus” in Paphos, Crete. Do a web search and you will find it.

Antakya has built a hotel that hovers directly above a huge number of excavated mosaics. There is a long video about it on YouTube.  Just type something like hotel Antakya mosaics into their search box, or better yet do a general video search outside YouTube. I try to never link commercial sites or advertisements, and why should I?

Dionysus lecture (the first half may be useful as an introduction to the subject):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMRY3Eh-32g&ab_channel=OsirisSalazar

For video entertainment that comes with some serious education in Indian and Tibetan art history, with a certain emphasis on foreign and even Greek connections, go to this site and view lectures by Osmund Bopearachchi and Amy Heller by clicking on the link:

Tung Lin Kok Yuen Buddhist Art Online Lecture Series.

Professor Bopearachchi has especially pertinent illustrated discussions about Herakles and Dionysus and their representations in Gandharan art.  Near the end of his lecture he presents the beautifully intact 2nd-century Begram Stupa, and tries to explain why it contains a continuous band around it with Dionysian scenes, while yet another band shows scenes from the life of the Buddha. He also shows one Roman sarcophagus with its Dionysian procession somewhat resembling the one in El Jem, not neglecting Hercules — I mean Silenus — drunk off his ass.

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Roman era mosaic from Antioch, the Greek says “Enjoy yourself!”*

It was discovered just a few years ago by accident while constructing a cablecar line.

(*Notice how the skeleton, surely an ironic argument for moderation, is reclining as if on a couch in the triclinium, supporting itself with the left elbow, the right hand free to reach for the wine and the bread. If you have long felt a longing to experience a Greek or Roman dinner party, try this page at the MET and notice these words even if you know them to be true: “Imagery associated with Dionysos, the Greek god of wine, intoxication, and revelry, was popularly used on objects designed for serving and imbibing wine.” Yes, it is so.)

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Finally, an experiential exercise for fully inebriated Tibeto-logicians only:

I know some of my ideas have met with skepticism, and I am aware that some Tibetanists out there are swiftly dismissive of anything in post-10th century said to date back to the imperial era. In the case of the emperor’s beer jug, attributed to the early 7th century, we can see there is a date equivalent to 1946 CE or 16th Fire Dog inscribed on it (it’s partly effaced making it difficult to understand), so you might be thinking with your well-cultivated skepticism, Is 1946 the real date of its production? So I invite you to look into some of the evidence.  First, go to BDRC.

Then, in BDRC's own local search box, type (or if it’s simpler do a cut-and-paste) in either Tibetan or Wylie script the following string: dngul dam rta mgo ma. Or: དངུལ་དམ་རྟ་མགོ་མ་

By the way, that syllable “dam” is a foreign loan from Persian or Chinese meaning jug or carafe (look into it and let me know your conclusions). We are more likely to be familiar with it in the modern expressions ja-dam, a jug meant for tea (likely a thermos made in China), and shel-dam for glass bottle.

In recent studies on the jug we are likely to find it called: chang snod rta mgo can. Or: ཆང་སྣོད་རྟ་མགོ་ཅན་

Go ahead and put that in the same search box and see what pops up. You may be surprised at the results of this experiment, but I’m not about to spoil it for you.

No doubt there are a few of you who, like me, will insist that the head on that jug is not that of a horse, but a camel. So you could try replacing rta (རྟ་) with rnga-mong or rnga-mo (རྔ་མོ་ or རྔ་མོང་), and see where that gets you.

Once you’ve found what you’ve found, look back at this five-year-old Tibetologic blog with the title The Emperor’s Beer Jug. The story’s not over yet. They rarely are.

 

 

Drunken Hercules (?) supported by young men.
Polychrome stucco, 1st century CE,
National Museum of Archaeology,
Naples — Photo by Y.B.

Silenus, once again, drunk on his ass or mule.
Roman mosaic in National Museum of Archaeology, Naples.
Photo by Y.B. You can also look here.

Sarcophagus with Dionysian scenes,
Archaeological Museum, Naples

Alchi Padampa's Meaning: A New Light to Shine on it

I remember being perplexed over and over again by this particular painting of Padampa, not only because of its unusual iconography but perhaps even more by its placement. Not that there is the least dishonor in being depicted anywhere at all on an image of the Bodhisattva of insightful wisdom, philosophical acumen and learning. But down there practically between the ankles? He has enough Padampa characteristics there can be not much doubt it’s him. Notice the earring-enlarged earlobes, the white blanket loosely enshrouding his basically unclothed body, the intensely staring eyes, the meditation strap holding up his knees and his legs crossed at the ankles. All that says Padampa. Everything checks out. But his hands might tell a different story. He is holding what has been described as a stick in his left hand* and what could be a stem of a plant in his right. We’ll focus on the stick.

(*Linrothe, p. 366: “a long white stick that may well be intended to indicate a shinbone horn.” Ham’s book, p. 53, calls it a flute.)

This painting is located in the temple of Alchi in Ladakh, in a justly famous three-storey temple there called the Sumtsek, or Triple Stack. It has three quite tall standing Bodhisattva images, and Padampa is located in the “populated robes” of one of them, Manjushri. See how Padampa floats there alone at a lower level than all the Great Siddhas that inhabit the cloth above him. He is even further marked out by being a larger size than any of them are.

Years in the business of Tibetan Studies should have made me immune — you do get used to having previous ideas turned on their heads and inside out — but I was sorely unprepared for the double-dose of shock I felt when an email popped up in my mailbox from a friend thousands of miles away. The email from author and translator Sarah Harding was about a visionary practice belonging to the Shangpa Kagyü school of Tibetan Buddhism, one that involves envisioning Padampa. The practice is detailed in a text that preserves some of the earliest Shangpa teachings, one attributed to Sukhāsiddhī, woman disciple of Virūpa. In a manner reminiscent of better-known guruyoga practices, the Great Siddha Virūpa is seen as identical to Hevajra. He sends down blessings in the form of a string of seed syllables and divine nectar that are then channeled by means of a cane flute held by Padampa directly into the opening called the Brahma aperture at the top of the head of the visualizer. 

(*Bear in mind that both Virūpa and Sukhāsiddhī were among the fifty-four Indian gurus of Padampa; ten of those Indian gurus were women. You heard me right.)

A few comments: Obviously the visionary practice text is a lot more involved than this, and in fact it is all about those confidential teachings the Vajra Vehicle is famous for, more particularly Completion Stage practices resembling the better known “Six Yogas of Naropa.” If you want to know more, turn to a qualified professional, because my point is not to go into any of that right now. The thing that turned my mind around was the cane flute (sba’i gling-bu) he holds in his left hand. Some people of past and present do mistake the cane for the reed, both being swamp plants, but reeds are flat, while cane has rounded stems that can get large enough to make easily hollowed out tubes suitable for making flutes. I myself, as a child, once tried following a book’s directions for making a flute from cane I picked myself, but making it make the right notes turned out to be a little more difficult than I had anticipated. This was not my first or last failure. Wait, let’s go back to the points I wanted to make.

The episode of imaginative visualization suddenly made me see something in the Alchi Padampa I’d never seen before, so let me see if you see it too. Padampa is depicted as a conduit for the blessings of the group of Great Siddhas, a role he accomplishes by making use of the cane flute as a kind of blowgun to inject blessings into the internal energy system of the practitioner. But the receiving person doesn't need to be visualized or depicted in Alchi. He or she is right there on the spot, seeking blessings just the way worshippers often do when, for instance, they place their heads below the extended right foot of Târâ or walk underneath the bookshelves that hold the scriptural Volumes. This would appear to be one of those instances in which a highly esoteric practice of the Highest Yoga Tantras is at the same time a popular devotional practice. There is nothing low or demeaning about being a conduit for the blessings of the Great Siddhas, is there?

And for anyone who might still harbor doubts about Padampa’s exaltation, I would ask you to have a look at the illustrated robes of another giant Bodhisattva in the Sumtsek, the Avalokiteshvara (Ham’s book, p. 164), find out what you find in the exact same position between the Bodhisattva’s shins, and tell me if you don’t see a painting of an enshrined standing Shakyamuni Buddha. I think we have to find better ways to think about worshippers’ interactions with icons and how such considerations might determine their placement.

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Readings and Viewings:

Chiara Bellini, “Some Other Pieces of the Puzzle: The Restoration of the Alchi Sumtsek (A lci gSum btsegs) by Tashi Namgyal (bKra shis rNam rgyal) and Other Considerations on the Stratification and Reinterpretation of the Paintings of this Temple,” Inner and Central Asian Art and Archaeology, vol. 2 (special issue: Judith A. Lerner and Annette L. Juliano, eds., New Research on Central Asian, Buddhist and Far Eastern Art and Archaeology, Brepols 2019), pp. 247-266. Thanks to A.H. for bringing this to my attention. Now I will have to read it. I tried to list the newest publications, on the assumption that they will contain references to earlier publications so I don’t need to include them here.

Peter van Ham with Amy Heller and Likir Monastery, Alchi, Treasure of the Himalayas: Ladakh's Buddhist Masterpiece, Hirmer (Munich 2018), especially plates on pp. 53, 248-249, 384.

There are a number of albums about Alchi published so far, and more are on the way. This one is more recent and available, and probably less pricey than the others. They all have magnificent photographs of the art. On p. 375 is a damaged but especially intriguing 2nd Alchi painting of Padampa, this one from the interior of a Chorten as part of an exclusive grouping of four icons. Two of them are unidentified Vajra Masters, the other local tradition identifies as Rinchen Zangpo and Naropa, and although the one is likely to be Jigten Gonpo, the other is most definitely Padampa. This Padampa is of interest because despite the damage it appears to depict the cane flute, and it also has in the right hand a very clear sprig of some herb, something not so visible in the Sumtsek portrait. I wish I had something to say about the botanical question and I haven't come to any conclusions of my own about the dates of the Alchi Padampa, but let’s say either late 12th or late 16th centuries. Ham's book suggests, as part of its discussion on p. 53, that the Padampa may have been added to a previously blank part of the painting during the 16th century renovation of the Sumtsek Temple.

Sarah Harding, Niguma, Lady of Illusion, Snow Lion (Ithaca 2010). 

If you want to know about the Shangpa Kagyü and its teachings, I send you to this. Niguma and Sukhāsiddhī were two outstanding women leaders at the very origins of the Shangpa lineage.

Amy Heller & Shawo Khacham, “Tibetan Inscriptions at Alchi, Part I: Towards a Reassessment of the Chronology,” contained in: G. Hazod & W. Shen, eds., Tibetan Genealogies: Studies in Memoriam of Guge Tsering Gyalpo (1961-2015), China Tibetology Publishing (Beijing 2018), pp. 535-552.

Rob Linrothe, “Group Portrait: Mahâsiddhas in the Alchi Sumtsek,” contained in: R. Linrothe & H. Sørensen, eds., Embodying Wisdom, Seminar for Buddhist Studies (Copenhagen 2001), pp. 191-206.

Although this article is all about the dhoti of Mañjushri, the very subject of this blog, there is no suggestion on the role Padampa might play in it. Its main value to my mind are in its well grounded and persuasive reflections on the needs of patrons, artists and the viewing Buddhist public, that would explain why the Great Siddhas are being portrayed as a whole group, why it is that so few of the Great Siddhas can be identified by their individual characteristics (maybe eight of them have identifiable iconographic features, and although cartouches were included so that names could be supplied, there is no trace of them ever being written). This author takes the people standing on the ground into account as few others have done, and my own thinking builds on it.

Rob Linrothe, “Padampa Sangye,” contained in: Rob Linrothe, ed., Holy Madness: Portraits of Tantric Siddhas, Rubin Museum of Art (New York 2006), pp. 364-367. 

On p. 364 is a superior print of the Alchi Sumtsek’s Padampa. Figure no. 10.9 in this volume is of special interest as it depicts what might well be a cane flute rather than a shinbone-flute (rkang-gling) as would be the common assumption based on Chö ideas about his iconography (for a closer view, see the enlarged detail of that painting on p. 108). 

Christian Luczanitz, “New Research on Alchi Monastery, Ladakh.” Posted on the YouTube channel of The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford on February 8, 2021. 

I also recommend a visit to C.L.'s website. Go here and scroll down a bit before losing an afternoon or two just looking at the photographs of the most impressive works of art. There are pages devoted entirely to Alchi, but I have faith you will find them yourself if you really want to. Tibetanists will want to take special notice of the entire fragmentary text of the long patron's inscription in the Great Stupa.

Dan Martin, “Padampa Sangye: A History of Representation of a South Indian Siddha in Tibet,” contained in: Rob Linrothe, ed., Holy Madness: Portraits of Tantric Siddhas, Rubin Museum of Art (New York 2006), pp. 108-123. This has not a word about the flute.

Su-kha-siddhi’i Lo-rgyus / Rgya Gzhung / Gsang-sgrub Lte-ba Sprul ’Khor / Dbang-chog-rnams, contained in: Gdams-ngag Mdzod, vol. 12, pp. 279–96. Plus another brief text in the same volume: Sukha-siddhi’i Zhal-gdams-kyi Skor dang / Gzer Gsum Gdams-pa-rnams [Bde Gsal ’Od-’bar]. 

For the English we look forward to Sarah Harding’s translation. Here is the most relevant passage with its reference to the cane flute, clipped from the digital etext supplied by TBRC:

For some earlier Tibeto-logic blog entries about Padampa's iconography see these:

https://tibeto-logic.blogspot.com/2020/03/not-padampa.html

https://tibeto-logic.blogspot.com/2011/06/padampa-portrait-painting-middle.html

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There have been very many new and enlightening publications related to Padampa and Zhijé tradition in recent months, so many I was contemplating a blog just on that subject, but right now I am pleased to inform you, assuming you haven’t heard, about a complete, first-ever translation of the volume on Zhijé from the Treasury of Precepts, or Gdams-ngag Mdzod done by Sarah Harding — 

Jamgön Kongtrul Lodrö Taye, compiler, Zhije, the Pacification of Suffering, from The Treasury of Precious Instructions: Essential Teachings of the Eight Practice Lineages of Tibet Volume 15, Snow Lion (Boulder 2019), a hardback book in 668 numbered pages. Sarah Harding is translating a volume of Shangpa Kagyü texts from the same collection.

Addition (March 6, 2021)

I inexplicably neglected to list an article that is precisely on the subject of this blog. I mean Rob Linrothe's “Strengthening the Roots: An Indian Yogi in Early Drigung Paintings of Ladakh and Zangskar,” Orientations (May 2007), pp. 65-71. Now I have to go find it and remind myself about what it says. Sorry about this. It does depict several other early Ladakhi representations I didn’t mention, and emphasizes that these largely correspond to the earlier Zhijé types of representations, and not the later Cutting type with damaru and thighbone.

 

Additional addition (March 9, 2021)

I should not have neglected some further examples and discussions of Padampas in early Drigung-related Ladakhi sites in Rob Linrothe, “Conservation Projects in Ladakh, Summer 2008,” Orientations, vol. 40, no. 8 (November 2009), pp. 91-99, and especially pp. 98-99. Thanks to R.L. for bringing it to my attention.

From Saspol Cave

Adding to the additional addition (July 2, 2023)

Christian Luczanits, “Alchi at the Threshold of a New Era in Tibetan Buddhist Art.”

https://projecthimalayanart.rubinmuseum.org/essays/monumental-manjushri-with-mahasiddha-adorned-robe/

I would particularly value reader interactions. Please be so kind as to place your commentary in the comments box and share your thoughts with everyone. I’m sometimes wrong and need to be told so, as we know.

Tibetan Histories: Newly Expanded

 

I’m sure some of you reading this already know about it. But in case you don’t I’m happy to report that those months of struggle at my keyboard during the 2nd shutdown last year have paid off. I managed to put together the new 2nd edition of the Tibetan Histories bibliography. BDRC (often called TBRC) has put it up on their site. This already happened before Christmas. Some friends have linked it on social media. The Word and PDF versions can be downloaded to your personal computer right now. It’s just the interactive ebook version that still needs some work before it can be made available. It cost me a lot to make it, but it won’t cost you one Pfennig.

I count myself fortunate to have so many good friends in the Tibeto-logical realm scattered around the world, the kind of friends always ready and eager to help a friend in need, responding to my emailed pleas. Over the years this bibliography has become a group effort, a collective project. And if it is to continue into the future as a viable and usable digital entity, it will require more help in coming years, so I thank you in advance.

If you want to read more about the history of the project, stretching way back into the 1980’s, try these earlier blogs about it:

https://tibeto-logic.blogspot.com/2011/01/tibetan-histories-addenda-et-corrigenda.html

https://tibeto-logic.blogspot.com/2020/06/tibetan-histories-now-new-website.html

If you are tired of waiting and would rather proceed directly to the book itself, download it at BDRC's website here:

https://www.bdrc.io/blog/2020/12/21/dan-martins-tibetan-histories/

I recommend to download both versions. The Word file you can use to add in your own notes (use a colored font!), while the PDF will serve as a record of what was in the original, so you can make reference to it. But if you do you may need to make note of the release date, since corrections and additions will keep on coming. Oh please, don’t give me that look. No cause for dismay. We all have faults that could use a little work.

I’ve done some house cleaning around the various websites I’ve set up over the years and eliminated practically all of the earlier versions of Tibetan Histories. They are as of now entirely replaced by this 2nd edition so no reason for them to be out there creating confusion.

Free Younghusband Secrets

 

In celebration of this season of holidays Tibeto-logic is passing on a gift, or spilling the beans, one or the other. We just want to tell you that if the Younghusband Expedition of 1904 is as interesting to you as it is to most Tibetanists, you are in luck. For a limited time only, for as long as the Kew offices are closed to the public in honor of the pandemic, you can get all of the already-digitized objects of the United Kingdom's Foreign Office archives in downloadable PDF format with a billing amount of £0.00.

All you have to do is register an email and password with their site, add the items you would like to your “basket,” and they will send the links to your email address so you can then save them one at a time on your own computer. If that sounds doable to you, go to this link to get started:

https://nationalarchives.gov.uk/

or better

https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

The 12 most interesting files are all called “Affairs of Tibet,” so I’d recommend that as the first item to type into their search box.

But if you are going to do it, do it now. I understand from what I see on their site that they will end this free service when the reading rooms reopen, which could be any time soon. Then their usual fees will go back into effect.

Many human cultures celebrate festivals of light in around this time of year. Light is a metaphor for knowledge, whatever dissipates the shadows of ignorance and confusion. Here's wishing for more transparency and truth in government and media in the coming year 2021. No doubt it will be better than 2020, so let’s invite it in with heart-felt elbow bumps and socially distanced air kisses all around.

Reference, in case you were looking for some other kinds of secrets:

Dorji Wangchuk, “Secrecy in Buddhism,” contained in: Orna Almogi, ed., Birds as Ornithologists: Scholarship Between Faith and Reason, Intra- and Inter-disciplinary Perspectives, Indian and Tibetan Studies series no. 8, Department of Indian and Tibetan Studies, Universität Hamburg (Hamburg 2020), pp. 7-177. 

PS: Oh my goodness, with the new strain of the virus popping up in England and now all over the place, I guess those reading rooms won't be opening anytime soon, so this gains us some time. They allow you a month to download the items you ordered, so if you get your order in and get your inoculations you should be okay.

Who is that Drunken Man?

 

If you haven’t seen any “Curators’ Corner” videos yet, some of them are both amusing and informative, so I warmly recommend watching. One in particular made me think in a new way about a Tibetan article kept in the Jokhang that may illuminate its artistic background. I’m referring to a short presentation by the Western Curator of Roman Britain for the British Museum, specifically his video on the Tantalus Cup. The Tantalus Cup is an oddly made drinking vessel that, after being filled up to a certain point, suddenly and unexpectedly reverses course and drains all of its wine out on your lap. I do think you need to start at the beginning, but if you are in a hurry you can see the object that most interests us right now by moving about eight minutes into it. The even more interesting thing is the Mildenhall Bacchic Platter. It’s not the main point of the video, just a tangent taken when explaining the Tantalus Cup. This byway is our highway.

The drunken man in the Jokhang Jug, attributed to the early
7th-century era of Emperor Songtsen the Wise

If you are inclined, you might see as I did a strong typological similarity, regardless of other differences, with Emperor Songtsen the Wise’s beer jug, something we’ve talked about six years back. Have a look here. This wine jug, a kind of decanter with a bulbous bottom and a tall narrow top ending in a camel’s head, most people think to be in some way Sogdian. There’s a musician-dancer doing something like what is known as the Sogdian Whirl, no longer taught in dance classes anywhere, although you can see paintings of it in Dunhuang. There is something about the style of the artwork that says somewhere outside Tibet in Central Asia, at least, and likely Sogdian inspiration.  

But I believe the inspiration may go deeper than that. It had occurred, as I’m sure it did to everyone, that the depictions on the jug are somehow Dionysian in nature, about partying with wild abandon, but also about paying the price of excess imbibing. What hadn’t occurred to me is that the motif could have roots beyond Sogdia, even in the classical world of Greece and Rome. And we do find Dionysian scenes and depictions of Hercules in Gandharan Buddhist art.

Dionysian scene from Gandhara, in Tokyo National Museum

But just to let some of the enthusiasm for Greek origins die down a bit, I ought to say that if Hercules were intended, we ought to see his trademark club and lion-skin cloak either on his body or close by. And we don’t. And it could just as well, or even preferably — I am not the one to judge — be Silenus, seeing he is a plump and balding old man, without the physique we normally associate with Hercules. So at best we can justifiably imagine that prior artistic conceptions of Hercules losing the drinking contest (or Silenus ready to be loaded on his ass) could have influenced our Jokhang jug. Surely no Tibetan of centuries past would have thought to see Hercules in it, although they must have recognized the scene as one of drunkenness, it's a beer jug after all. Well, it is now used to dispensed blessed beer, the spigot being a late addition I suspect,  but it was probably originally used for wine.

For extra credit points, or just because you find it interesting, there are some places around the web you can visit, with pictures worth book-loads of words.

There is a well-known Paul Rubens painting called The Drunken Hercules, that you can see in several websites, including this one. It depicts him with two women on one side, his drinking buddy Silenus on the other, and a wine pitcher dangling empty from his left hand.

Compare this early 16th-century artwork by Raimondi. Here two young men are supporting the drunken man, identified in this case as Silenus, a Dionysian figure if there ever was one.

Sometimes he's shown taking a whiz, as drunken men often do, even in the most public of places.

Go have a look at this Gandharan example of a drunken Herakles supported by two people, in this case women.

The Mildenhall Bacchic Platter in the British Museum is what got this train of thought going.

Given the Jokhang jug has a camel head spout, I was wondering if camels might not have some Dionysian associations. Have a look here. And tell me if you don’t see what I’m seeing.

I asked Amy Heller what she thought about this blog several days before putting it up, and she said something she had seen before came to mind, an object that forms a subject for a paper I haven’t yet seen — Suzanne G. Valenstein with Annette L. Juliano and Judith A. Lerner, “Hellenism in Sui-Tang Chang’an: Dionysiac Imagery on Mortuary Camels.”  You can see the object itself at the Met website: 

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/53630

Go there to see the description and to supersize the photo 

as you must

So let’s see, as a conclusion... Are we right to see Hercules — the James Bond of his day, a man’s man who succeeded in every difficult or impossible task he ever undertook, the single exception being this one drinking contest — there on that Jokhang jug or not? The conclusion is nowhere better made than in your own mind. I suppose you’ve guessed that I, for one, think it is a possibility worth considering further.

§§§   §§§   §§§

There is more literature about Buddhist uses of Herakles and Asian adaptations of Bacchic/Dionysian art than you may think. To get started, have a look at one or another of these sterling essays:

Piu Brancaccio and Xinru Liu, “Dionysus and Drama in the Buddhist Art of Gandhara,” Journal of Global History, vol. 4 (2009), pp. 219-244. 

Martha L. Carter, “Dionysiac Aspects of Kushan Art,” Ars Orientalis, vol. 7 (1968), pp. 121-146. 

Martha L. Carter, “Dionysiac Festivals and Gandhâran Imagery,” contained in: Banquets d'Orient (=Res Orientales, vol. 4 [1992]), pp. 51-60.  

Martha L. Carter, “The Bacchants of Mathura: New Evidence of Dionysiac Yaksha Imagery from Kushan Mathura,” Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 69, no. 8 (1982), pp. 247-57.

F.B. Flood, “Herakles and the ‘Perpetual Acolyte’ of the Buddha: Some Observations on the Iconography of Vajrapani in Gandharan Art,” South Asian Studies, vol. 5 (1989), pp. 17-27.

Jonathan Homrighausen, “When Herakles Followed the Buddha: Power, Protection, and Patronage in Gandharan Art,” The Silk Road, vol. 13 (2015), pp. 26-35. 

I-Tien Hsing, “Heracles in the East: The Diffusion and Transformation of His Image in the Arts of Central Asia, India, and Medieval China,” translated by William G. Crowell, Asia Major, 3rd series vol. 18, no. 2 (2005), pp. 1-52.

Richard Stoneman, The Greek Experience of India: From Alexander to the Indo-Greeks, Princeton University Press (Princeton 2019), chapter 3: “Herakles and Dionysus.” It has to seem to us a bit odd to see that the two Greek gods Alexander of Macedonia (356-323 BCE) is said to have noticed among the Indian gods were exactly these two. Many have tried to decide which Indian gods would have reminded him of them, but it’s just too difficult to be sure.

 

• With this blog I celebrate the electoral defeat of reality television celebrity Donald Trump and the intellectual dullness, parochial narrowness and the pretend/hypocritical religiosity he brought with him. I say this because I can say whatever I want to say here. It’s a free medium in a free zone, and it’s way past time for a party. Cheers to the failure of the teetotaler!

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