Paper long abstract:

Saspotse is a small hamlet situated in a side valley of the Indus River in Ladakh, a region that once found itself in the fortunate position of being in the center of the trans-Himalayan network of trade and communication between Northwest India, Kashmir, Tibet, and Central Asia. The 12th century stupa temples at Sapotse stand out as the smallest and newest discovered monuments among the Alchi Group of Buddhist monasteries, which are fundamental to understanding the history and cultural heritage of Ladakh and even of the Western Himalayas as a whole. Although Saspotse has remained little studied due to the state of the damaged murals, the surviving archaeological, architectural, and art historical evidence at the site contains specific data which merit a close investigation that cannot be performed on any other monument.

In particular, Stupa Temple 1 provides unparalleled insight into the intellectual approach of Buddhist masters toward the conception of the “ideal space”: they expressed their philosophy by turning the embellished space into a functional device leading toward enlightenment. This goal was achieved by designing the temple according to an overall spatial concept, i.e., deriving the temple geometry from mandalas, and placing a delicate lion-throne votive stupa in the center of the chamber. The gilded high-relief images and the murals on the votive stupa place the Buddhist teacher (guru) in the position of a Buddha, a feature that reflected a new development in Buddhism in the region. While previous scholars have considered it as a development deriving from Central Tibetan models, this study presents the figure in the center as an Indian siddha (Ch. xituo 悉陀, Tantric master) instead of a Tibetan lama. The configuration of the reliefs will allow us to address the fundamental question of what visual and spatial elements designate “the position of the Buddha” in pictorial representations.

The iconography and the form of the Saspotse votive stupas not only point at a close relation to Kashmir but further prompt us to draw connections to the Buddhist monuments of the Silk Road sites north of the Karakorum and into the Taklamakan Desert - thereby putting the Alchi Group in a broader context than have been done by previous discussions.