What is Repousse?

                                                                                                      

History of the Repousse Technique

 

 The French word repousse (pushed back, pushed again) is the universally accepted name for this particular type of metalwork. The Nepalese also have their own names such as pata (Nepali) or thojyamajha (Newari) but all refer to the process of creating three-dimensional designs in malleable sheet metal, usually copper, gold, or silver. The technique is characterized by hammering out the principal design from the back and then finishing it from the front.  Certain details may be cut into the raised surface, a technique called “chasing,” and other details raised further by hammering down the metal around them. This is known as “embossing.”

Repousse in all its complexity has a long history beginning at least five thousand years ago when it is known to have been practiced in Mesopotamia. It was then adopted by other peoples, for example the Greeks, who called it sphyrelata (hammer-driven) and, famously, by the medieval craftsmen of Europe. We do not know when repousse first began to be practiced in Nepal but it was in use at least by the early seventh century CE. At that time a gilt copper kavaca (image cover) was offered to the stone Garudasana (Vishnu seated on Garuda) enshrined at Changu Narayana. The cover is inscribed and dated in correspondence to 607 CE. The inscription further states that the cover replaced an older one “which had become dilapidated with the passage of time” thus providing evidence that earlier examples existed. So far none have been discovered.

 

 

Repousse as practiced by the newars of the kathmandu valley

 

 

Repousse metalwork is a very demanding technique requiring strength tempered with a knowledge of the extent of force required.  It is unforgiving, as the craftsman cannot readily repair or cover up mistakes as can be done in other techniques like lost wax casting. Traditionally, it is the Newar component of Nepalese society that provides the principal metalworkers. Their work is known well beyond Nepal, formerly either exported by Newar merchants to Tibet, Bhutan and China, or produced by Newar  craftsmen resident in those countries. Today as prized possessions, Nepalese repousse work can be found in and on temples and monasteries, in museums, and in private collections throughout the world.  Beyond Nepal repousse is today little practiced. Almost alone Newar craftsmen have stubbornly preserved this ancient technique and Nepal is one of the last places in the world where it continues to flourish today..

 

Kuber Singh Shakya - A Master Craftsman of Nepal

by Mary Shepherd Slusser and James A. Giambrone

April 19, 2001

The metallurgical arts of ancient Nepal have long been famous and their antiquity well established.1 Moreover, despite the well-entrenched opinion that “no living art supports [Nepal’s rites and festivals] any longer,”2 the metallurgical arts at least, yet thrive in the creation of quality sacred art that can hold its own with the best of the past. This view has been championed by Erberto LoBue who, however, like many others has focused more on the art and artists of lost wax casting.3 Perhaps this is because the apparent complexity of this process has aroused greater interest than in what is presumed to be the “simple” process of working in repoussé. Actually, it is the reverse. Repoussé is the more difficult and demanding, a fact recognized even by the practitioners of lost-wax casting.4The purpose of this paper is to redress the balance somewhat by an examination of the work of Kuber Singh Shakya, the most eminent recent practitioner of the art of repoussé, whose numerous works sanctify the nation and many surrounding countries.
Kuber Singh Shakya was born in the Oku-bahal and Mahabauddha temple quarter of Patan about 1881 and died in 1957 (fig. 1 left).5 Like most Nepalese metallurgists, he was a member of the Newar community of that city. He belonged to a lineage of scholars and artists whose genealogy can be traced at least as far back as Abhaya Raj Shakya, who founded the illustrious Mahabauddha temple about 1564.6 Out of this lineage it was Kuber Singh’s family that the Malla kings of Patan selected to be their royal artificers in repoussé.7 Kuber Singh learned his craft in the workshop of his father, Bhima Narasimha Shakya (d. 1931), also a highly regarded artist, but who because of religious duties – he became the thakali (elder) of Oku-bahal – abandoned the work in favor of his son. Kuber Singh soon became the most sought after artist in this medium. He was called upon to decorate and provide images and cult objects for the most prestigious temples, Hindu and Buddhist, in the Kathmandu Valley, for the Buddhist monasteries of the Nepalese northern borderlands, and for those of far away Ladakh, Tibet, and Bhutan.
In the Kathmandu Valley there seems to be almost no monument that did not profit from the art of Kuber Singh. It was he, for example, who crafted in silver repoussé the doors to the sanctum of Pashupatinath, and (in company with his father and an uncle) provided the gilt-copper repoussé decoration of the spire (harmika) and the directional Buddha shrines of Svayambhunath stupa, two of the most sacred sites in Nepal.8 Kuber Singh also made the gilt-copper roof and the torana of the portal for the esteemed Hariti temple at Svayambhunath and, in Kathmandu, the gilt-copper roofing, prayer wheels and other decorative adjuncts of Jana-bahal, the temple of the White Matsyendranath. Again, it was he who provided repoussé decoration for the chariot of this deity, that of the Red Matsyendranath and companion chariot of Minnath of Patan (fig. 2), and was called upon even from distant Bhaktapur to fashion repoussé crowns for that city’s famous Navadurga dancers. Following the destructive 1934 earthquake, he was much in demand in the restoration of the damaged metalwork of the temples and shrines, including a hand in the restoration of the Mahabauddha temple in his neighborhood.9 For Kathmandu he made a gilt-copper repoussé replacement of the damaged seventeenth-century portrait image of King Pratapa Malla and family, which crowns a tall pillar in the royal square. His descendants also affirm that he made a replacement for one of the nearby pillar images which face the Taleju temple, but they are unable to identify it.

It is for his large, and sometimes monumental, Buddhist sculptures in repoussé, however, that Kuber Singh won the most renown. One, for example, his last work, is the over three-meter high seated gilt-copper image of Sakyamuni Buddha in Karmaraja monastery adjacent to Svayambhu stupa (fig.3 above). Like other monumental repoussé sculptures, in the creation of which Kuber Singh was a master, it is a complicated, multipart construction in which the parts are skillfully dovetailed or joined with rivets.10 It was fabricated in situ over a period of three years. He also made four multipart gilt-copper repoussé sculptures for nearby Dharmacakra monastery on Mañjusri hill (figs. 4 -5 above).They predate the monumental Buddha by more than a decade.

The Roadless Mountainous Regions
Kuber Singh’s output was by no means restricted to the Kathmandu Valley. Commissions for sculptures and other work in repoussé seem to have poured in from distant places in Nepal and nearby Buddhist countries. Often with the aid of his sons and other family members the works were completed in his Patan workshop but frequently required travel to far away places to be made in situ. According to his descendants, one of Kuber Singh’s Nepal destinations was Nubri in the upper valley of the Buri Gandaki river, then (and to a large extent, still) some two weeks’ arduous walk into the roadless mountainous region northwest of Kathmandu. Kuber Singh and his family refer to this region as the Eighteen Hundred Rivers (Athahrasayekhola). It embraces the territory beginning a little north of Arughat, the adjoining districts of Kutang, Nubri (Nup-ri), farther north, and Tsum, or Shar, to the east.11 The upper reaches of the valley and its principal tributary, the Shar, or Tsum, Khola, is beaded with a succession of villages whose Tibetanized inhabitants practice Vajrayana Buddhism in common with their Tibetan neighbors over the border. In these valleys one wonders if there is a temple or monastery (gonpa, dgon-pa) that has not benefited from the art of Kuber Singh.
The artist’s association with the Buri Gandaki Buddhists and their needs for sacred objects seems to have come about through the influence of a certain lama, variously named Kusyo or Checukusyo.12Perhaps conditioned by the superior quality of the work Kuber Singh did for the Nubri lamas on the chörten illustrated in Figure 1, the lama is said to have encouraged Kuber Singh to make the long trip up the Buri Gandaki to satisfy the appetite of several gonpas for sculptures, chörtens, and prayer wheels (fig. 10 below). From old records in the hands of Kuber’s descendants it is known that together with three helpers, his sons Kesh Raj and Rudra Raj and his nephew Sankha Raj, he spent an entire year in that region. This was from the spring of 1942 to the spring of 1943 (Vikram Samvat Caitra-Sukla 1999 to Caitra-krisna 2000). In 1954, from April to October – and thus avoiding another rigorous winter season – Kuber and his sons (now minus the nephew) were again working there. Given the hardships, two trips seem to have been enough. Seventy-year-old Rudra Raj, one
of the participants in these northern ventures, recalls even now how cold they were. They also faced dangers unfamiliar to Kathmandu Valley dwellers. On one of their journeys, overnighting in a village house as then customary, chance ordained that they sleep upstairs. Rudra Raj claims that if they had slept on the ground floor, as they more often did, they would have met the same fate as the guard dog, a huge Tibetan mastiff, which provided some wild animal’s dinner in the night. They were both lucky and “scared to death,” remembers Rudra Raj.
There is no record of what the company made except that in the memory of Rudra Raj, the only one of the four still alive.13 The list is rather sketchy, is likely incomplete, and for the most part, without fieldwork, it has not been possible to identify most of the gonpas involved. It is clear, however, from the return addresses on Kuber Singh’s letters home that in 1954, at least, he and his helpers spent time in the village of Samagaon, or Rö, its Tibetan name, at an altitude of about four thousand meters in the shadow of Manaslu. It is one of the northernmost outposts in Nubri, not far from the Tibetan border and the headwaters of the Buri Gandaki as it spills from the Himalayas. In this village, for “Nhubari” monastery (Khargu Cho ling), the largest in Samagaon, they made seventeen two-meter high prayer wheels. Rudra Raj states that they were commissioned by three lamas, all brothers, and installed in their quarters. Apparently it was for the same three that the large gilt-copper repoussé chörten decorated in silver was made in Kuber Singh’s Patan workshop (fig. 1). For Khargu Cho ling monastery Kuber and his assistants also made a gilt-copper repoussé image of Padmasambhava. It was based on a drawing prepared by Kuber Singh, occasionally a preliminary step in making large, multipart images, particularly if the commissioner requests a preview. Fortunately the drawing has been preserved in the home of his descendants (fig. 11 above). The drawn image only measures 89.5 centimeters so may not be to scale, because Rudra Raj, Kuber’s son who helped make it, states that the finished image was twice that size, 208 centimeters. Hemraj Shakya tells us the Padmasambhava was “five cubits tall.”14 Snellgrove, who unfortunately provides the scantiest of information about the physical appearance of the sculptures he saw during his passage through Nubri and Tsum, made particular mention of it: a large Padmasambhava “in bronze” which is “the recent work of craftsmen summoned from Patan.”15
Kuber Singh and his assistants also had commissions from monasteries in the less accessible eastern district of Tsum (figs. 12-13). One was from Mu (Tsum, Chu) monastery, far up the Tsum Khola near the Tibetan border. For Mu they made three repoussé images: one of Aryatara, another of Sakyamuni Buddha, and the third an Ekadasa (Eleven-headed) Lokesvara. According to Hemraj Shakya each of these was three cubits tall, i.e., roughly five feet. They also worked for another monastery in Tsum, identified as “Rajin” by Hemraj Shakya, but undoubtedly to be equated with Ra-chhen, located a little further downriver from Mu (figs. 14 -15 below). For it they made two repoussé images, again reputed to be three cubits tall, one of Ekadasa Lokesvara, the other of Sakyamuni Buddha. These sculptures very likely correspond to what Snellgrove describes as “a large gilt eleven-headed ‘Glancing Eye’ [i.e., Ekadasa Lokesvara],” the altar’s central figure, and to the Sakyamuni he noted among the flanking images.16 Both of these Shar, or Tsum, Khola monasteries, Mu and Ra-chhen, are Bhutanese foundations.17 The choice of Kuber Singh to embellish them came by way of the influential Lama Checukusyo. He introduced Kuber to the chief lama of Bhutan, who had come to the Kathmandu Valley to help in the restoration of Svayambhu stupa after the 1934 earthquake. Kuber’s descendants refer to him as the “Dukpa [sic] lama,” in reference to the Drukpa sect of Buddhism practiced in Bhutan.
Ra-chhen gonpa
Curiously, it seems, it was in Nubri, rather that at home in his workshop, that Kuber Singh fulfilled a Bhutanese commission for a large silver image of a seated Vajrasattva. Hemraj Shakya gives its height as four and one-half cubits. If correct, this is an impressive size, especially for an image made of costly silver. Ninety-two kilograms were employed which arrived from Kathmandu in sheets so thick that they had to be first pounded thin by a local blacksmith. Although a Bhutanese commission, the image is said to have been for “Bigun,” an unidentified monastery in this region. The name suggests that it might be at Bi village, famous for its exquisite engravings on stone slabs piled in windrows to comprise the omnipresent mani walls in the village environs (fig. 16 below). The name also might represent a deformation of rang byung (The Self Originated), the name of the principal monastery in that village.19 Michael Aris, who explored Bi in 1973, also reports that nearby is “the little temple of Bal.po.Chos.sgang (The Religious Hill of the Newars).” He was unable to enter but, he remarks, “its name implies that there are images of Newari craftsmanship inside.”20
The Buri Gandaki was by no means the only region in Nepal to which Kuber Singh and his assistants traveled to construct large multipart copper repoussé images for the practitioners of Buddhism. They went several times to Helambu, a region several days’ climb north of the Kathmandu Valley that remains staunchly Buddhist in the Hindu kingdom of Nepal. With Kuber Singh’s descendants there are a number of letters written home in 1940 (V. S.1997) from a work site in Helambu called Rani Ghyan, a location yet to be identified. In that year he was accompanied by his son Kesh Raj, nephew Sankha Raj, and a relative named Chandraman. Hemraj Shakya specifies a Helambu monastery by name “Bagam” (identified as “Badhan” by Rudra Raj) for which Kuber Singh made two “three cubit tall” images, one of Padmasambhava, the other of Sakyamuni Buddha. Kuber Singh traveled even farther afield, to a monastery in the Rolwalling region of Nepal, east of the Sun Kosi River, to fulfill a commission for a large gilt-copper Ekadasa Lokesvara. In V.S. 1993 (1936), the family wrote Kuber Singh at another workplace in Nepal called Cuva gonpa but it is yet to be located. The reigning Nepali master of repoussé sculpture was also called to Tibet to fashion images for several gonpas located at Kyirong (sKid-grong), just over the border. He made, for example, a “four and a half cubit” tall image of Avalokitesvara for the town’s Samlin gonpa and for another, on the testimony of Rudra Raj, he carried out repairs that included replacing the gilt copper roof. He also beautified the portal with gilt repoussé decoration. For this monastery, or perhaps another, he made an image of Sakyamuni Buddha flanked by his two favorite disciples. He also made a large prayer wheel for Pansin (Tib. sPang-zhing) gonpa, an establishment founded by the same Bhutanese hierarch as Mu and Ra-chhen in nearby Tsum. The same gonpa also commissioned a large image of Mahasahasrasurya Lokesvara, one of the 108 forms of Avalokitesvara popular in Tibet and with nearby coreligionists.21 Because the deity has eleven superimposed heads it is usually simply called Ekadasa (Eleven-headed) Lokesvara. Indeed, several of the previously mentioned sculptures identified thus may in fact represent this particular form.
For Pansin’s Mahasahasrasurya Lokesvara Kuber Singh also made a preview drawing, an accomplished work, artistically and iconographically, still in the custody of his descendants (figs. 17-18 above). Such a drawing, as we have discussed elsewhere, was not obligatory but sometimes requested by the commissioner.22 The drawings themselves have rarely survived since they were considered unconsecrated sketches with no intrinsic artistic or religious value. The five extant from the hand of Kuber Singh may be the only ones in existence. In the instance of this commission the image was made in Patan and sent to Tibet. However, according to Kuber’s descendants, Pansin monastery was under construction and unable to receive the finished image so the lamas placed it for temporary safekeeping in neighboring Jhyamlin gonpa. When the time came for the Jhyamli lamas to return the image to the rightful owners at Pansin they refused to surrender it. Hence, Kuber Singh, as so often, trudged far afield to make a replacement in situ. All told, according to Rudra Raj, his father made eight of these large complex representations of Mahasahasrasurya Lokesvara.
Kuber Singh made at least one image for a gonpa in Ladakh and another for the king of Bhutan, but in both instances he fabricated them in his Patan workshop and shipped them to the respective countries. Of the Ladakhi image and its whereabouts we only know from Kuber’s descendants that it was “five cubits tall” and represented the popular Sadaksari (Six-armed) Lokesvara. However, for the Bhutanese image we are very well informed for as in the case of the Padmasambhava for Nubri and the Mahasahasrasurya Lokesvara for the Kyirong gonpas, the preliminary drawing of it still exists. It represents the enthroned bodhisattva and future Buddha, Maitreya, seated with pendant legs (fig. 19 left).23 The enormous multipart, gilt copper repoussé image that ensued, more than three meters tall, was so large it had to be assembled in the street in front of the workshop. Disassembled for transport on its completion around 1938-39, the Maitreya image probably made its way to Bhutan in a number of pack baskets borne on the backs of Nepalese porters. Although yet to be ascertained, it may be the sculpture in the royal Maitreya temple in Tongsa Dzong, Central Bhutan (fig. 21 below). Françoise Pommaret, however, a specialist of Bhutanese culture who has seen and photographed the image, is under the impression that it is of gilded clay and was made at the turn of the century.24 Given the facts that it is enshrined in a royal chapel and that Kuber’s image was commissioned by the Bhutanese king himself makes this identification suspect. Moreover, given the unpopularity of Maitreya among the Bhutanese, it seems unlikely that there would be two such large representations of him in the small kingdom, one of clay and one in repoussé. Only physical examination of the image in question will settle the issue.
In order to fulfill his commissions, Kuber Singh appears always to have been accommodating in respect to travel to distant places in Nepal and Tibet, no matter how difficult the journey. Thus it seems strange that he did not also go to Bhutan to more conveniently make the enormous Maitreya image in situ but instead constructed it in Patan, leaving it to strangers to carry out the final assembly and gilding. The explanation is provided by his son, Rudra Raj, who affirms that the king’s emissary, the “Dukpa lama” mentioned above, warned Kuber not to set foot in Bhutan for fear that the king would never release him. Rather, he would make him a prisoner of the court and install him permanently as resident artist. Thus despite the drawbacks attendant on constructing the Maitreya from afar, Kuber thought it wise to remain in the safety of his homeland. The story is mindful of those often told in Nepal about certain sculptures so skillfully executed that petty kings, so it is alleged, maimed the sculptor to prevent him from making comparable works for rival courts.25 Among the old letters and other tattered papers in the custody of Kuber Singh’s descendants one is particularly interesting, but disappointing in its brevity. It is a rough time sheet kept by the four men who made up the work party on the Buri Gandaki in 1942-43: Kuber, his sons Rudra Raj and Kesh Raj, and his nephew Sankha Raj. The document consists of four vertical columns headed by each worker’s name and overlain by some two-dozen horizontal columns. Recorded in the resulting squares is each man’s output on a particular project over a given number of days. Unfortunately, for the most part the entries concern for whom the work was done (i.e., whom to bill) rather than for what was made. In the rare cases to the contrary the work named is an unidentifiable prayer wheel, chörten, or unnamed icon. A typical entry in Kuber’s column, for example, reads: “From Vaisakh-sukla 7, Tuesday [the Nepal era lunar calendar month], the work of Kusyothile Jhyamcho. Total days 23.” Similarly, another entry records “From Jyestha-sukla 1, Thursday, again the gilding work for Lama Chirupa. Total days 5.” As shown in the parallel columns, in the same five days Kuber’s helpers were also engaged in the gilding project. The words “again the gilding” suggests it was the continuation of a process and this stage alone occupied twenty man days. How nice it would be, though, to know what they were gilding that busied them for so long – perhaps even the Padmasambhava image for “Nhubari” gonpa for which we have the drawing (fig. 11). Had the entries been less brief we might know a great deal more than we do both about Kuber Singh Shakya’s profession and his legacy in the monasteries on the Buri Gandaki. Just as Kuber Singh learned the art of repoussé from his father, Bhima Narasimha, so did his sons learn from him in what almost certainly represents a long continuum with roots in the Nepalese distant past.26 Today, this legacy flourishes in the capable hands of Kuber’s grandson, Raj Kumar. Fittingly, one of his current projects is the repair of the gilt roof and pinnacle (gajura) of the prestigious Hariti temple on which his grandfather worked so long ago.

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all text & images © Mary Shepherd Slusser and James A. Giambrone

1 M. S. Slusser, “On the Antiquity of Nepalese Metalcraft,” Archives of Asian Art 29 (1975-76): 80-95. The research on which this biography is based was largely conducted in 1997 in the domicile-cum-workshop of Kuber Singh’s son and grandson, Rudra Raj and Raj Kumar Shakya. Our thanks to Nutan Sharma who translated the Newari language written materials and frequently assisted our oral exchanges with Rudra Raj. [back]

2 Stella Kramrisch, Art of Nepal (New York: Asia Society, 1964), 49. [back]

3 Erberto LoBue, “Himalayan Sacred Art in the 20th Century,” Art International 24: nos. 5/6 (January-February 1981), 114-28; “The Newar Artists of the Nepal Valley. An Historical Account of their Activities in Neighbouring Areas with Particular Reference to Tibet-I,” Oriental Art 31, no. 13 (Autumn 1985): 262-77; “The Artists of the Nepal Valley-II,” Oriental Art 31: no. 4 (Winter 1985-86); 409-20. Other studies with a similar focus are Ian Alsop and Jill Charlton, “Image Casting in Oku Bahal,” Contributions to Nepalese Studies 1 (December 1973): 22-49; Marie-Louise de Labriffe, “Étude de la fabrication d’une statue au Nepal,” Kailash, A Journal of Himalayan Studies 1: no. 3 (Kathmandu, 1973): 185-92; Andreas Höfer, “On Cire Perdue Casting in Nepal,” Journal of the Nepal Research Center(Kathmandu/Wiesbaden, 1980), 39-66; Erberto LoBue, “Casting of Devotional Images in the Himalayas: History, Tradition and Modern Techniques,” in W. A. Oddy and W. Zwalf, eds., Aspects of Tibetan Metallurgy, British Museum Occasional Paper No. 15 (London, 1981), 69-86; Axel Michaels, The Making of a Statue: Lost-wax Casting in Nepal (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1988). To my knowledge the only studies of Nepalese repoussé are Ian Alsop, “Repoussé in Nepal,” Orientations (July 1986), 14-27 and M. S. Slusser et al., “Metamorphosis: Sheet Metal to Sacred Image in Nepal,” Artibus Asiae 58: nos. 3/4 (1999): 215-32. [back]

4 Why this is so is discussed in M. S. Slusser et al., “Metamorphosis,” 217. [back]

5 His descendants are unable to provide an exact birth date but affirm that at the time of his death in 1957 he was seventy-six years old. Erberto LoBue, “Himalayan Sacred Art in the 20th Century,” 118 gives the dates as 1891-1956. [back]

6 M. S. Slusser, “Bodhgaya and Nepal,” in Bodhgaya, Site of Enlightenment, ed. J. Leoshko (Bombay: Marg Publications, 1988), 126-42. Pandit Amrtananda, the well-known informant of Brian Houghton Hodgson, was also of this lineage, descended from one of the brothers of Jivaraja, the direct ancestor of Kuber Singh. One of the pandits who translated a Buddhist chronicle for Daniel Wright apparently also belonged to this lineage (Daniel Wright, History of Nepal [1877 reprint: Calcutta, Ranjan Gupta, 1966], 138 and n. 225). For further discussion of this lineage see Hemraj Shakya, sivadeva samskarita rudravarna mahavihira chagu adhyayana [A Study of King Shivadeva’s Rudravarna Great Monastery] (Patan: 2538 Buddha Jayanti Samaroha Samiti, 1994), hereinafter cited as sivadeva samskarita. Hemraj, an esteemed scholar of Nepalese culture, is also of this lineage. [back]

7 According to the oral testimony of his descendants, November 1997. [back]

8 In November 1997 these, the following decorative works, and others were listed from memory by one of his sons and former assistant, Rudra Raj Shakya. [back]

9 Hemraj Shakya, sivadeva samskarita, 77. [back]

10 This technique is described in detail in Slusser et al.,”Metamorphosis,” 219-21. [back]

11 See, for example, David Snellgrove, Himalayan Pilgrimage (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1961), 300-01. Hemraj Shakya also uses the Eighteen Hundred Rivers designation (sivadeva samskarita 147-49 and Bodhimandapa kutagara mahabauddha mandir samkipta-itihasa [A Short History of Mahabauddha Temple] (Kathmandu: Cakraraja Shakya et al., 1109 N.S. [1988]), 77-78. [back]

12 Hemraj Shakya, sivadeva samskarita, uses the longer term and as Lama Checukusyoga he appears as the publisher of Shakya’s Bauddhanatha-stupa samksipta itihasa [A Short History of Bodhnath Stupa], published in V.S. 2027 (1970) in Kathmandu. This lama is still living, resident at Svayambhu, but unfortunately it has not yet been possible to interview him for the light he could surely cast on the activities of Kuber Singh. [back]

13 The family was also the source for the lists published by Hemraj Shakya in the previously cited works sivadeva samskarita and Bodhimandapa. [back]

14 A cubit (New. hakha) corresponds to the length of a man’s forearm to the end of the middle finger, roughly 18 to 21 inches (46 to 53 cm). All cubit measurements cited here are those recalled by Rudra Raj and recorded by Hemraj Shakya, Bodhimandapa, 77-78. [back]

15 Himalayan Pilgrimage, 244. Gilt-copper repoussé images are often erroneously identified as “bronze.” [back]

16 Snellgrove, Himalayan Pilgrimage, 259. [back]

17 Ibid., 260. [back]

19 Michael Aris, “Report on the University of California Expedition to Kutang and Nubri in Northern Nepal in Autumn 1973,” Contributions to Nepalese Studies 2, no. 2 (June l975): 53. [back]

20 Ibid. [back]

21 On this deity see B. Bhattacharyya, The Indian Buddhist Iconography (Calcutta: K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1958), 400. [back]

22 Slusser et al., “Metamorphosis,” 217. [back]

23 In memory of Kuber Singh Shakya, his son Rudra Raj and grandson Raj Kumar, presented this drawing in 1998 as a gift to the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art, together the United States National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution. On the importance of the drawing see M. S. Slusser, “Drawing of a Seated Maitreya” in Thomas Lawton and Thomas W. Lentz, Beyond the Legacy, Anniversary Acquisitions for the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (Washington, D.C: Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 1998), 176-77. [back]

24 Written communication. [back]

25 For an example see Slusser, Nepal Mandala vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 206-07. [back]

26 Certified at least to A. D. early seventh century by a repoussé image dated in accordance with 607 and clearly earlier still since the dated image replaced a forerunner that “had become dilapidated with the passage of time” (Slusser, “On the Antiquity of Nepalese Metalcraft,” 84-88). [back]