Echoes of myth and monument

Among the many legends about the Boudhanath Stupa, one involves a poor poultry keeper Jhazima and the buffalo skin.

Boudhanatha is in fact the Sanskritised Panchayat-era renaming of the chaitya which was originally called Khasti Mahachaitya (‘great stupa of the dew drops’). However, the chaitya had another name too according to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition –– the Great Jarung Kashor (‘Let it be done, Slip of the tongue’) Stupa.

Many years before the birth of the Shakyamuni Buddha, Jhazima, lived with her four sons in the village where Boudha sits today. After the demise of the Kasyapa Buddha, she petitioned the king to grant her land the size of a buffalo’s skin to build a stupa and inter the Buddha’s remains. The king, thinking it would be a measly piece of land, gave her permission.

However, Jhazima carefully cut the buffalo skin in a long strip, like a rope, and circumscribed a larger area – where the great Boudhanath Stupa stands today.

This symbol of devotion quickly took on a political significance, as the wealthy people of the country were humbled by Jhazima’s faithful act.

If a poor woman like her can build a stupa of such magnificence, they thought, they would have to build shrines equal to the mountains.

“Stop the building,” they implored the king: “If this construction continues, then each and every one of us will be harshly criticised.”

But the king would not hear of it. “This poor, single poultry-woman, through gathering earnings from raising chickens, established her four sons born of four fathers as respectable householders. Not only that, with her remaining wealth she builds a stupa such as this. I thought this to be truly amazing, and so the words ‘Let it be done’ (jarung) slipped from my tongue (kashor). Kings speak but once!” he said in response.

This charming and extraordinary story is the subject of Object in Focus #5: Invocation at the Taragaon Museum situated next door to Boudhnath itself by contemporary visual artists Koka Vashakidze from Georgia and Alicia Junissaliyeva from Kazakhstan and curated by Roshan Mishra.

At the centre of the room is a dark-coloured rope-like object spiraling – almost like a dizzying solar system, with what looks like a vague triangle standing in for the Sun – and surrounded by a rectangle of red ropes.

But as one walks around, observes the work with an unfaltering gaze, the circle of the base quickly stands out. Then, with a little change in the angle, one can imagine a dome rising from it, followed by the ever-watching eyes and the finial.

Here is the Boudhanath Stupa, translated, stripped down to its backbone – an abstraction. Like a cosmic bridge, it brings together the myth and the monument, looking both ways into the past and present.

All this may not be entirely conspicuous at first, but when one realises that the whorl is in fact real buffalo skin, the pieces fall in place. The rectangle outlines the block of land upon which the Mandala sits today. Take a step back outside the building and the doors represent the streets opening around the complex.

The artists spent several weeks in Boudhanath, measuring the circumference of the stupa. Since animal skin is not permitted inside, they used the red rope for the purpose. People would come and watch them at work, perhaps wondering what they were up to. But the story of Jhazima, Vashakidze believes, was one of undefeated courage and creativity.

Jhazima defied expectation, says Vashakidze. And instead of just putting the skin on the ground, she cut it in narrow strips to cover more area, demonstrating her boundless imagination. “And the king in the end has to say, ‘No, she has to continue making the stupa’,” he adds.

Vashakidze, whose extensive contemporary body of work ranges from site-specific pieces to media installations, sees this as the moment when the rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak, are equal – because one woman with devotion for the Buddha stood up against the system and built an unprecedented monument, anticipating perhaps even the Shakyamuni.

The artwork, in this sense, is an invocation to memory, to history and to Jhazima. Along with Junissaliyeva’s experience in healing and energy exploration, the trio of the artists and curator Mishra has created a poignant piece that is equally contemplative and dramatic, reminding us that despite the overwhelming restrictions – political, social, professional – and widespread philosophical, spiritual lethargy around us, we can still create what we want to, for the realm of possibility is boundless.

Says Mishra: “I think it is a brilliant notion to sit with one object, one narrative.” This has much to do with the fact that the viewers can spend time with this echo from the past under an extended spell.

Leaving the exhibition, one is filled with a striking desire to visit the Boudhanath Stupa, where the remains of Kasyapa Buddha are believed to be entombed, to compare, to recall. There too, prayers and invocations from all around bounce off the white dome and fill the air with sweet music, as though the voices of good will have never ceased and promise to echo into the future – in the same way that Object in focus #5: Invocation is an echo itself, of the enduring legacy of Jhazima.

The artwork will also travel to the Tbilisi Triennial in Georgia in October 2022.

Object in focus #5: Invocation

By Koka Vashakidze and Alicia Junissaliyeva

Curated by Roshan Mishra

Taragaon Museum,

Boudha

Open 10:00am – 5:00pm

Till 18 August 2022.