The series depicts Milarepa’s life in numerous individual scenes. The central image shows Milarepa; episodes from his life are arranged around it. The thangkas are considered exceptionally well-preserved and significant from an art-historical perspective.
The Swedish geographer, explorer, travel writer, and cartographer Sven Hedin was a member of the Great Sino-Swedish Expedition of 1927 - 1935, which traversed large parts of Central Asia and China. The Hedin Expedition acquired the series of 19 Milarepa thangkas in 1930 in Beijing. However, the Chinese capital was not their original place of manufacture or origin.
The actual origin of the thangkas is unclear. In her study, the Austrian-Swedish Tibetologist Toni Schmid identified Nepal as their country of origin. The prominent Tibetologist Giuseppe Tucci located them in northeastern Tibet. More recent art-historical comparisons by Himalayan Art Resources identify stylistic connections to Kham/Lhatok
There are two related but not identical series of Milarepa life thangkas. In addition to the series described here - the 19 thangkas from the Hedin Collection in Stockholm—there is also an older one at Hemis Monastery [Ladakh -Western India]. This series presumably served as the model for the collection acquired in Beijing in 1930.
| Milarepa Thangkas at the Ethnography Museum in Stockholm |
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