Lot 76 Dα

A stupa of this type was made for the monks of the Kadampa order, which was founded in Tibet in the 11th century by Drom Tönpa, who was a disciple of the Indian scholar Atisha, who is said to have brought this form of stupa to Tibet. In the late 14th and early 15th centuries, the Kadam tradition was absorbed into or taken over by the Gelug School, also known as the Yellow Cap School.



Traced back to burial mounds, the stūpa form was adopted in early Buddhism and was originally used to store the relics of the Buddha after his cremation and since then for sacred remains and relics of religious figures.
It evolved into the form so typical today with a (square) base, a round pedestal, a hemispherical dome vault, a square reliquary chamber and the top finished with a crown/jewel.

It comes in all sizes and in different materials, from small reliquaries to large structures.

The votive stupas usually contain figures or sacred texts.

The stupa symbolizes the Three Jewels Buddha, Dharma, Sangha (Triratna), the cosmos, the Five Elements earth, water, fire, air, ether, the chakras and the Buddha himself.



The miniature stupa is often used in Tibet for memorial purposes and to aid meditation. Most Kadama stupas are between eight and ten inches tall and function as a ritual object on a shrine or during the elaborate ritual of mandala offering common to large religious events in Tibetan, Himalayan and Mongolian Buddhist culture.

西藏 十三/十四世紀 合金銅佛塔
可比： Miriam Lambrecht，《Art du Tibet》，布魯塞爾 2005年，頁25及Rubin Museum of Art，紐約，編號 C2003.21.1、HAR65233
來源： 德國慕尼黑私人收藏，此後由其家族傳承