Kanwal Krishna

(Indian, 1910-1993)

Forty watercolours from Krishna's 1939-1940 visit to Lhasa that accompanied Sir Basil Gould. Depicting the ceremonies, dignitaries and enthronement of the Dalai Lama. various sizes

Footnotes

In September 1939 Kanwal Krishna heard news of the discovery of the 14th Dalai and immediately travelled to Lhasa. The artist arrived on 2nd October, just in time to witness the Dalai Lama's own arrival in Lhasa on 8th October. He then stayed in the city to paint all the ceremonies, the various dignitaries in attendance and the enthronement itself before his departure at the end of July 1940.

It is one of the greatest stories ever told. A child, born in a stable, come among humanity to save us and to be our guide. A child who grows to maturity not just once and for all time, but successively – not just as an idea, but in flesh and blood. A child who, growing to maturity, shares our pains and sorrows, our hopes and our fears, who yet manifests the infinite wisdom and the infinite compassion of one who has, over numberless lifetimes, enhanced their spiritual practise to the point of total perfection.


Such a one - and indeed the only one – is the Dalai Lama of Tibet. When, therefore, the Great Thirteenth, Thubten Gyatso, chose – as is ever in the gift of those rare beings who have attained the highest spiritual development – to leave his body for the Tushita Paradise that is their temporary abode before returning once more, it was incumbent on his bereaved people to begin the search for his next incarnation.

It was a Water Bird year, 1933 according to the Western calendar. At once began the careful scrutiny of signs and wonders that both presaged and attended the longed-for return of the Precious Protector, Holder of the White Lotus and emanation of the peerless Bodhisattva of Compassion manifested by the Dalai Lamas. For the best part of five years, the most accomplished spiritual masters in the land – pre-eminent among them the young, wonder-working mystic, Reting Rinpoché, recently appointed Regent of Tibet – worked unstintingly first to determine where they should look and then to identify correctly from among the several possible candidates their efforts had disclosed. Early on in the process, a rumour took hold that an infant seen by the Panchen Lama – recognised by a majority of Tibetans as the second most important incarnation in the land – was highly promising and worthy of closer examination. This turned out to be grounded in fact and it was actually the very one who was subsequently confirmed to be the authentic rebirth of the Great Thirteenth. In the meantime, however, there were twists and turns sufficient to furnish the plot of a rewarding costume drama.

Of course, one might ask why, if these supreme beings have such powers, they do not self-identify and proclaim themselves through miraculous deeds? But this would be to miss the point. Theoretically, it would be possible. In practise, the very process of identification and official recognition, culminating in the child's public enthronement, is part of what constitutes the institutional aspect of the Dalai Lama's recurrent ministry and in the absence of which the character of his office would change. Instead of being a role in which his subjects participated, drawn together in bonds of mutual care and affection, the Dalai Lama would become, in effect, a god who ruled by diktat rather than a human being who rules by consent and as mediator between the mundane and the supramundane realms.

In any case, it is our great good fortune that the official appointed to represent the British government at the forthcoming enthronement of the new Dalai Lama in Lhasa, on February 22nd 1940, understood clearly that the event he was about to witness would be a seldom granted irruption of that supramundane realm into the mundane. This was a moment, all too brief, at which gods and men would gather in humble obeisance at the feet of the one who - not sent but of his own volition - comes among sentient beings to be their refuge.

Sir Basil Gould, then Political Officer for Sikkim, Bhutan and Tibet, was deeply interested in the culture of this most reclusive of nations. Not only did he compile several books about the Tibetan language but, on this occasion, he set about documenting, in a work of unique importance, the process by which the incoming Dalai Lama was recognised and his identity confirmed. More than that, he personally met with each of those involved and, most significantly for us today, arranged for portraits of each of them to be painted by the outstandingly talented young Indian artist, Kanwal Krishna.

When we contemplate his pictures, when we enter – as we always must when in the presence of real beauty – into the very spirit uniting artist and subject, we are brought as close as embodied existence allows us to a participation in the events the sitters themselves experienced. In an important sense, we are brought into communion with the Sems rGyud, the mind stream, of each individual. This is clearest in the official portrait of the child Dalai Lama himself where we see at once that his subject inspired the artist to attain a mastery of his medium that arguably he was never to reach again.

Gould's written account of the young boy's identification, first published in New Delhi in 1941 titled 'A Report on the Discovery, Recognition and Enthronement of the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet', gives us the most intimate glimpse of the process ever undertaken. Read in conjunction with the account of Kieutsang Rinpoché , one of the Tibetan officials most closely involved, we are brought close to the mystery that has, for centuries fascinated and sometimes appalled outsiders. The 18th century Italian missionary, Fr Ippolite Desideri, was convinced the system of identifying reincarnations was a work of the devil.

The very first indication of where those appointed to the task should search for the new Dalai Lama was the slight movement of the shrouded corpse of the Great Thirteenth who, as was customary, sat in state wrapped in gauze in a chapel in the Potala palace before being entombed in a memorial stupa. It was noticed that the head dipped slightly so that it faced no longer directly forwards but was tilted in an easterly direction. By itself, this was not necessarily of any particular significance to the search for the new incarnation. But taken with various other signs, a clear picture began to emerge. It was, for example, also noted that an unusual star-shaped fungus appeared at the base of a pillar
standing to the north-east of the shrine where the Great Thirteenth sat while, under some stairs at the eastern end of the area where public discourses were held outside the Jokhang, Tibet's holiest temple, some snap-dragons bloomed unexpectedly. Then, too, some unusual cloud formations were, on one occasion, seen on the horizon. Together, these signs in nature seemed to suggest an eastern approach. What was needed now was greater precision. More than a thousand miles separate Lhasa, Tibet's capital, from what was then considered to be its eastern border with China.

In the hope – and indeed expectation – of obtaining a more fine- grained picture of where the searchers should look, the Regent undertook the prescribed pilgrimage to the lake in southern Tibet known as the earthly abode of the Glorious Goddess, Palden Lhamo, the Dalai Lamas' protector deity. A fearsome being, her iconography depicts her as having a dark blue body. In her right hand she brandishes a club over the spilled brains of those who have broken their promises to her. In her left hand, she holds a skull cup brimming with the blood of her enemies. With half-open mouth, she is seen chewing on a human corpse. Her three red, round eyes gleam with lightning while from her mouth are omitted cries that sound like thunder. Her blazing yellow hair stands on end while her beard flames with fire. On her head she wears a diadem of five skulls, while round her neck is draped a garland of fifteen freshly severed heads.

Small wonder that the Victorians were convinced that Tibetan Buddhists actually worshipped the devil. But this was completely to misunderstand the tantric worldview of which the protector deities are a key feature. As in the mystical practices of Western alchemy, the profane is transmuted into that which is sacred: her real enemies are not human beings but the afflictive emotions with which they are ever assailed.

Tradition holds that it is from her that, subsequent to the appropriate sadhanas, come the visions that will direct the seer in the quest for the new incarnation. The young Regent was duly granted three successive signs, seeing them among the waters of the lake. In the first, he saw, clearly formed, three characters of the Tibetan alphabet. The next of his visions showed a three- storied monastery with several striking features: its second story was painted turquoise, its top story was adorned with a golden roof and there was a path threading eastwards in the direction of a low hill. The third vision was of a single story building with a blue roof and guttering of unusual shape. Having carefully noted the contents of his visions, the Regent retired to his shrine room and took each in turn as the object of his meditation practise.
Concluding that the first of the letters that he had seen indicated the A of Amdo, the easternmost of Tibet's three major provinces, and that the second of them corresponded to the K of Kumbum, the great monastic foundation of Je Tsongkhapa, spiritual father of the dgelugs tradition to which the Dalai Lamas belong, the Regent duly ordered that a search party consisting of three senior lamas be dispatched at once.

This was not without opposition from some quarters. Surely, the argument ran, the Dalai Lama would not choose to be reborn in an area so far from the Holy City. And had not a stallion from the late ruler's stables had recently broken loose and bolted to the house of an infant from the Great Thirteenth's own family whose cause was being promoted a number of influential people? But the Regent was adamant. The boy should be sought in the East. His orders were understood to have been divinely corroborated when the oracle at Samye monastery took off his breastplate while in trance and handed it to the search party's leader, Keutsang Rinpoché. It surprised no one that the Rinpoché subsequently found everything just as the Regent had foretold.

Still more persuasive was the behaviour of the child himself.
His conduct, Keutsang Rinpoché reported, 'was extraordinarily profound for his age'. But the severest test was yet to come. This consisted in an interview at which the candidate was presented with a collection of items, some of them belonging to the Great Thirteenth, some not, from which he must choose those that had been his in his former life – no mistakes allowed. With mounting joy, Keutsang Rinpoché watched as the little lad chose correctly his predecessor's ritual drum and eating bowl. But then – disaster – he picked up a walking stick that had belonged to an associate, but not to the Dalai Lama himself. For a moment, it looked as if all was lost. Yet, having examined it carefully, the child put the stick down and picked up the correct one. Afterwards, it was remembered how, in fact, the Great Thirteenth had made a gift of this stick from among several that he owned.

It was still another year before the identification of the boy could be announced publicly. When it was, great was the rejoicing all over the Buddhist world – we must not forget that the Dalai Lama is an object of devotion for all who follow the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, not just Tibetans. Of course, the rejoicing was greatest in Tibet and it was a crowd of many thousands who turned out to welcome him when at last he arrived at the plain outside Lhasa where stood, newly erected, the Macha Chenmo – the Great Peacock, a tented encampment brought out to welcome the returning Precious Protector.

When Gould himself was finally presented to the child Dalai Lama, he noted "a solid solemn but very wide-awake boy, red-cheeked and closely shorn... seated high on his simple throne," adding; "I soon realised the truth of the report that the child appears to recognise the associates of his predecessor. I noticed the steadiness of his gaze, the beauty of his hands, and the devotion and love of the Abbotts who attended him. All seemed to be aware that they were in the presence of a Presence."

Those who have enjoyed the privilege of meeting personally with the Dalai Lama will say the same thing of him even in old age – how indeed they found themselves in the 'presence of a Presence.' And it is precisely this that Kunwal Krishna's portraits capture: the sense that all those close to the Dalai Lama are touched by him in some indefinable yet concrete way while the
portrait of the child himself attests clearly to the artist's conviction that his sitter truly does manifest the presence of the Divine.


We would like to thank Alex Norman, author of the 2020 biography "The Dalai Lama: An Extraordinary Life" for his assistance with the footnotes to the portraits in this lot and also for the compilation of the many introductions to this catalogue.