Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 14. (Budapest, 1994)
KELÉNYI Béla: Panydzsara Mahákála. Egy tibeti Tekercskép a Delmár-gyűjteményből
BÉLA KELÉNYI PANJARA MAHÄKÄLA A TIBETAN PAINTED SCROLL FROM THE DELMÁR COLLECTION An interesting piece in the Tibetan collection of the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts, Budapest, is an eighteenth-century thangka, or painted scroll, depicting one of the forms of appearance taken by a protective deity known in Tibetan as mGon po chen po (Skt.: Mahäkäla). 1 This thangka passed into the possession of the Ferenc Hopp Museum in 1949, from among the items assembled by the Budapest art collector Emil Delmár ( 1876-1959). 2 Delmár, who as a young man had travelled in India and China, based his collection on works of art from the East. Later on he disposed of a large part of his Oriental collection and began to collect works of art from Europe. 3 In 1939 he left Hungary for Switzerland, moving on from there to the United States. Before his departure, however, he handed over a part of his collection to the Museum of Fine Arts and to the Museum of Applied Arts, both in Budapest. Delmár 's Oriental items featured in a number of large-scale exhibitions in Hungary, including an amateur exhibition in 1907, the Oriental Arts Exhibition organized in 1929, and in the exhibition put on to commemorate Ferenc Hopp in 1933. 4 The present scroll picture can be identified beyond any shadow of doubt on the basis of one of the object descriptions in the list of the items submitted for the 1907 exhibition (in which items loaned by Delmár were exceeded in number only by those lent by Ferenc Hopp, the subsequent founder of the Museum). 5 However, on the basis of the other documents available to us, it is probable that abovementioned thangka was not actually exhibited on this occasion, despite its very high quality. But since the thangka was already in the Delmár Collection in 1907, we may assume that it was acquired not through mediators, but by Delmár himself in the course of his travels in China. This rare type of thangka, painted in gold contours on a black background and with the use of an unusual artistic technique, is an example of a so-called „blackthangka" (Tib.: nag thang), which mostly depict the protective deities, the dharmapäla-s. The entire composition and some of the details (clothing, tongues of fire, scenery, etc.) are painted with especial fineness and great skill. The contours-swirling and at first sight almost chaotic-enhance the mobility of the picture. The main figure in the picture is Panjara Mahäkäla (Tib.: Gur gyi mGon po), one of the forms of appearance of Mahäkäla, one of the protective deities of the Sakya sect 6 who appears surrounded by attendants in the socalled „eight-figurc group" (Tib.: Gur gyi mGon po lha brgyad). The origin of the deity is difficult to establish, since the name can be interpreted in many different ways. The Tibetan word gur means „tent" but in Sanskrit the deity's name is pahjara, which means „cage, aviary, skeleton". 7 In Tucci's interpretation it means „cage of bones" - in other words, a skeleton. 8 According to Tucci, this form of Mahäkäla was originally an archaic.
