This rare work commemorates the life and teachings of the Indian Buddhist master Vanaratna (1384–1469), who was born as a prince in the Chittagong region of present-day Bangladesh. Vanaratna was ordained as a novice at the age of eight and received full monastic ordination at the age of twenty. He then traveled to Sri Lanka, where he spent six years studying religious texts, meditation, and yoga. One day, according to legend, a stone statue of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara spoke, instructing him to go to Tibet, where he initiated monks into the esoteric Buddhist practices of the Kalacakra and Chakrasamvara Tantras. Vanaratna also traveled repeatedly to Nepal, where he finally settled late in life at the hermitage of Govichandra. In 1469, at age eighty-five, he expired while seated in meditation. Vanaratna is considered to be the last great Indian Buddhist master to travel to Tibet. His life and teachings are eulogized in The Blue Annals, which record the lineage of the Kagyupa sect of Tibetan Buddhism.
Vanaratna is elegantly depicted with jewelry and luxurious garments and holds a lotus blossom indicating his identification with Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. Despite his mature age of seventy-one at the time of his charitable act, he is shown in an idealized representation in the prime of life, which suggests that this painting was most likely commissioned as a eulogy shortly after his death. The grain flowing from his hands to the ascetics is perhaps meant to symbolize not only his distribution of food as recorded in the painting’s dedicatory inscription but also his offering of profound religious teachings, for which he was famous.
Dedicatory inscription from an 1862 copy in the Bharat Kala Bhawan, Varanasi:
In the year 575 (1455 CE) Vanaratnapa [the pa suffix is honorific], while residing in Govichandra monastery, made donations of grains to ascetics, Shaiva ascetics, brahmins, and householders. Gifts were made to all who came from sunrise to sunset. Again in the year 588 (1468 CE), on the eighth day of the bright fortnight of the month of Sravana (July–August), on a Wednesday, Vanaratnapa made donations to the entire monastic order consisting of 1,590 persons. In the following year [1469], on the seventh day of the dark fortnight of the month of Margasirsha (November–December), a Monday, Vanaratnapa attained Buddhahood.
(Translation by Ian Alsop, Dhanavajra Vajracharya, and Hemraj Shakya.)
