Lamayuru, Ladakh

The village of Lamayuru in Ladakh is best known for its prominent Drigung Kagyü monastery, one of the most picturesque monastic establishments in the region. Around the monastery, however, the older Buddhist heritage of the village is preserved in minor monuments on the western approach.

Among the group of chörten (མཆོད་རྟེན་) on this approach are three passage chörten retaining the remains of paintings. One of these — designated here as the Buddha Chörten for its principal image — has been studied in some detail (Luczanits 1998). Like the Alchi Shangrong chörten, it is built on an east-west axis, the present entrance facing west at 285°. The fragmentary paintings represent an unusual, rather Central Tibetan style for thirteenth-century Ladakh. The workshop responsible for them may have been the same as the one active at Alchi, and if so the paintings would be roughly contemporaneous with the later phases there. The documentation in the (◊ Buddha Chörten) gallery was carried out in 1994 in black and white; the colour images are from 1998.

A second chörten in the group (◊ Teacher Chörten) preserves teacher portraits in local monastic robes at the centre of both its surviving decorated walls.