Woven Mandalas in the Mongol Imperial Court

The Vajrabhairava mandala is a large work, produced by weaving silk and gold threads using a highly sophisticated technique known in Chinese as “silk tapestry with slits (kesi).” The iconographic composition of this tapestry follows a standard pattern found in the Buddhist visual idioms of the wider Himalayan world. Dominating its pictorial program at the center is the mandala itself, which consists of a series of concentric circles and squares that create an architectural blueprint of a palatial structure. Vajrabhairava, the main deity of the mandala, occupies its central niche.1 In the top row, weavers added portraits of Buddhist deities and monks who participated in the transmission of the iconographic and ritual knowledge associated with the Vajrabhairava mandala below. Along the bottom row, donor portraits clearly identify the work as a product of the imperial patronage during the Yuan period (1271–1368), the Mongol dynasty that ruled over eastern Eurasia.

The Tibetan-language inscriptions provide names of each of these imperial donor figures. The white-robed figure in the bottom left corner is labeled “Emperor Tuq-Temür (Gyelpo Tuk Timur)” (Wenzong, r. 1328–1329, 1329–1332), while the blue-robed figure sitting next to him is his brother, labeled “Prince Qoshila (Gyelbu Koshala)” (Mingzong, r. 1329)(fig. 2).2 The two female donors, the respective wives of these two male figures, appear opposite them in the bottom row. “Budashiri Qatun (Ponmo Bhudhashri)” (1307–1340), the wife of Tuq-Temür, sits on the edge of the bottom right corner, and the wife of Qoshila, “Babusha Qatun (Ponmo Bhabucha)” (d. 1330), sits next to her (fig. 3).

Mandalas and Portraits

There are differing opinions about the intended function of this tapestry Vajrabhairava mandala.3 One plausible theory is that it was originally produced to be hung inside one of the Yuan imperial portrait halls.4 Starting in 1294, when the portrait hall was commissioned for the first Yuan emperor, Qubilai (Shizu, r. 1260–1294) (fig. 4), and his principal wife, Chabui (Chabi, d. 1281) (fig. 5), the members of the Mongol ruling house enshrined portraiture of their deceased family members in the imperially sponsored Buddhist monasteries.5 These monasteries, established around the Yuan capital of Daidu (modern Beijing), had separate halls devoted to this purpose.6

According to Chinese textual records, in each of these halls, the Mongol ruling house enshrined the portraits that captured the likeness of their deceased family members together with tantric Buddhist mandalas.7 All of the imperial portraits and mandalas were completely woven in silk, rather than being painted or sculpted, as was previously the norm for imperial portraiture in eastern Asia. These woven images were large, comparable in dimensions to the Vajrabhairava mandala.8

The iconographic choice of Vajrabhairava as the main deity, occupying the center of the mandala, was likely to have been related to the fact that Vajrabhairava is a wrathful emanation of the bodhisattva Manjushri. This bodhisattva was a particularly important figure for the members of the Mongol ruling house, so much so that the Yuan emperors fashioned themselves as bodily emanations of Manjushri.9 An architectural inscription from 1345, for example, praised Qubilai as “the bodhisattva of wisdom,” Manjushri’s epithet.10 Put another way, enshrining the Vajrabhairava mandala in proximity to the Mongol imperial portraiture was a way to layer the rhetoric of Buddhist kingship into the visual program of the Yuan imperial portrait halls.11

Judging from the inscriptions that accompany the donor portraits, one can deduce that this tapestry Vajrabhairava mandala was produced under the patronage of Emperor Tuq-Temür about the year 1329. Having usurped the throne after killing his half-brother Qoshila, Tuq-Temür sought to establish his political legitimacy by elevating the status of his deceased mother, for whom he conducted a posthumous coronation as Empress Wenxianzhaosheng. Unlike Qoshila’s mother, who was of Mongol origin, Tuq-Temür’s mother was a Tangut, and the posthumous coronation made her the first non-Mongol empress in Yuan history. During this process, Tuq-Temür commissioned a new portrait hall for his father and mother, and this Vajrabhairava mandala was likely enshrined inside this structure.12

Transmission Lineage

Around the thirteenth century, Vajrabahraiva was a relatively new deity in eastern Asia, with the associated tantric scriptures existing only in Sanskrit and Tibetan.13 It was through the Mongol ruling house’s close relationship with the wider Tibetan Buddhist world that the tantric iconographies and rituals of Vajrabhairava came to be transmitted to the members of the Yuan court.14 The specific iconography of the Vajrabhairava mandala reveals the transmission lineage associated with what is known as the “forty-nine deity cycle.”15 Indeed, Pakpa Lodro Gyeltsen (1235–1280), the highest-ranking Tibetan monk working for the Yuan court during its early decades, also composed his own version of the Vajrabhairava liturgical hymn following in this cycle, titled Sadhana of Forty-Nine Deity Vajrabhairava.

Woven Images

Archaeological records suggest that the weaving technique “silk tapestry with slits” already existed in the Tarim Basin region (present-day Xinjiang) in the sixth to eighth century.16 By the thirteenth century, this weaving technology had already become a mainstream component of the Chinese material culture. Even so, in eastern Asia before the Yuan period, the technique of silk tapestry was primarily used for the production of utilitarian items such as sartorial products or protective covers for scrolls and texts; there is no evidence that the technique was employed to produce figural images intended to fulfill devotional or other ritual functions.17 In other words, the medium of the Vajrabhairava mandala—and all other images that were enshrined in the Yuan imperial portrait hall—was a major innovation that marked a significant development in the history of silk tapestry in eastern Asia.

This new development was most likely linked to the Mongol ruling house’s exposure to the visual culture of the Tangut state of the Western Xia (Xixia, 1038–1227), where earlier examples of the silk tapestry Buddhist icons have been preserved. At Khara-Khoto (Mongolian; Chinese: Heishuicheng), a site associated with the Western Xia, artists produced Buddhist icons in silk tapestry during the twelfth century.18 The most famous example of the tapestry icon from Khara-Khoto is the image of the Green Tara now in the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (fig. 6). Considering the significant roles played by Tangut personnel and culture in the formation of Yuan imperial courtly culture, it is likely that the members of the Yuan court were aware of such a tradition and drew inspiration from it.19

Within the Yuan court, this choice of medium was also part of the larger shift in the hierarchy of artistic forms that the members of the Mongol ruling house promoted. The Yuan rulers maintained a close relationship with their pastoral nomadic roots and environmental surrounds, which included the abundance of animal fibers that constantly provided material for visual and material productions.20 The ruling house preferred fiber arts over other forms of artistic expression, such as painting and calligraphy, previously considered the most prestigious in China.21 

More broadly, the production of monumental woven images such as the Vajrabhairava mandala was representative of the larger trend in the Yuan court workshop to experiment with a variety of materials and techniques in making Buddhist icons. In addition to silk tapestry images, the Yuan court artists fabricated icons of Buddhist deities using a wide range of materials and technologies. Examples of Buddhist imagery fired as a porcelain (fig. 7) or sculpted using lacquer (fig. 8) survive in museum collections around the world, attesting to the creativity and flexibility of those who produced Buddhist imagery for the Yuan court.22