Temple Banner with pilgrimage sites and scenes from the "Svayambhu-purana" (Ancient Text of the Primordial Buddha) (1635): Art, History and Details

Temple Banner with pilgrimage sites and scenes from the "Svayambhu-purana" (Ancient Text of the Primordial Buddha) (1635) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In the upper band, pilgrimage places in and around Nepal’s capital of Kathmandu are mapped and labeled with inscriptions in the Newari language. Below are scenes from the story of a king who ended a drought with the assistance of serpent deities and a Buddhist master. The king rides horseback at the lower left, and the serpent deities are the seated human figures with snake heads behind them. The white vase-shaped monument with pointed top, shown three times, is the Svayambhu Stupa, a sacred monument in Kathmandu dedicated to the Buddha Svayambhu. Probably half of a complete banner, this piece hung in a monastic courtyard during annual festivals.

Object facts

• Title: Temple Banner with pilgrimage sites and scenes from the "Svayambhu-purana" (Ancient Text of the Primordial Buddha)
• Date: 1635
• Culture: Nepal, Kathmandu Valley
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera and gold on cotton
• Dimensions: Overall: 39 x 130.2 cm (15 3/8 x 51 1/4 in.)
• Collection: Nepalese Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1954.788

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. A. S. Ingalls

Further reading listed by the museum

• Slusser, Mary Shepherd. “Serpents, Sages, and Sorcerers in Cleveland.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 66, no. 2, 1979, pp. 67–82.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.