Srimantadeva Vajracarya and the Buddha Aksobhya for the Lhasa Newars

Abstract

The modern Newar Buddhist manuscripts copied in Lhasa by the Lhasa Newars sometimes note in the colophons that the mss. were commissioned to be copied in front of the Buddha Aksobhya (see Yoshizaki, “Newar Buddhist Manuscripts copied in Modern Tibet: from the collection of Asha Archives, Kathmandu, Nepal”, forthcoming). The first reference to the Aksobhya in Lhasa is, as far as I know, found in the colophon of the “Saptavara-dharani” copied in the Newar year 773, corresponding to A. D. 1652/53, when a Newar merchant who was engaged in the business of trade in Lhasa commissioned a copy after paying homage to the statue of the Buddha Aksobhya. It was copied by Srimantadeva Vajracarya, from Tarumula Mahavihara in Kathmandu.That year, Srimantadeva made another sketch book which Pratapaditya Pal named “Book of Buddhist Litanies and Images”. He prepared the sketches in Lhasa to serve as models for Tibetan-style paintings. His name is also found in a short song composed in the same year in praise of the Buddha Aksobhya in Lhasa. The song, “Lhasa jina-varnana-stotra”, was discovered by this author in the collection of Sanskrit and Newari manuscripts preserved in the Asha Archives, Kathmandu.