The Chakrasamvara Mandala is the archetype of the Highest Yoga Tantra meditation cycles in Newar Buddhism. Chakrasamvara and Vajravarahi are the principle deities of secret shrines in Newar Buddhist institutions. The shrines and the rituals related, however, are accessible only to the initiated Buddhists, and images of Chakrasamvara are never displayed in public. Although Chakrasamvara’s significance is commonly known in Newar Buddhism, these practices are rarely openly discussed with the uninitiated.
This painting provides a superb example of the fully detailed Chakrasamvara mandala iconography. Chakrasamvara and Vajravarahi are situated at the mandala’s core and a series of concentric circles, signifying the systematic purification of the practitioner’s body, radiates outward. The entire mandala is surrounded by the eight charnel fields, as an environment of renunciation of egoistic craving to prepare the practitioner for meditation.
According to the Newari inscription in the footer, the painting was consecrated in 1490 (N.S. 610) during the one-year death-rite ceremony at the request of the donor Vajracharya Jayaraja of Manasu Vihara (monastery) in memory of the death of his father, Vajracharya Uhlasa, who is depicted as a white-haired figure at the lower right. The accuracy with which the scene also represents the priests performing the fire-sacrifice rituals is remarkable, since even in the contemporary context, similar rituals with Vajracharya priests continue to be performed with the same dynamism and vitality of the donors. The second inscription in the lower border states that Uhlasa died in the month of Mansir (December – January) in 1489 (N.S. 609).
