By Richard P. Morin
In 1993, when Marcia and Phil Lieberman set out for the 14th-century Buddhist temples - or gombas - of Upper Mustang, Nepal, they were unsure about what they would find.
The Liebermans were drawn by the writings of a scholar who visited the site in the 1950s. He described superb wall paintings and towering statues dominating the two temples tended by monks. But until 1992, the region had been closed for several decades to outside visitors; the couple didn't know whether the hidden cultural treasures about which they had read survived.
After several days of trekking through a high-altitude desert, the Liebermans discovered what they had read to be true: "It was breathtaking," Marcia Lieberman says of the gombas. "I saw right away that the quality of work is magnificent."
The gombas of Thubchen and Jamba are among the best surviving examples of Tibetan monastic architecture of the Sakya-pa, the predominant order of Tibetan Buddhism during the 13th and 14th centuries. The majority of the Tibetan temples of this era had been destroyed by the Chinese. "Tibetan culture stretches into geographic Nepal," said Marcia, a visiting scholar in Brown's Department of Visual Arts. "If it wasn't for that, these things would not have survived."
Each temple is approximately the size of the Salomon Center for Teaching. Erected 100 yards apart, the mud-and-brick temples complement one another rather than duplicate design and function. "Thubchen represents the philosophical element of Buddhism; Jamba, its mystical side," Marcia said.
Extensive ornamentation and iconography, considered to be the finest Buddhist murals in Nepal, adorn the temple walls. Thubchen's vast central prayer hall, illuminated by a central skylight, is decorated with elegantly painted figures, Bodhisattvas and Buddhas, representing conceptualized spiritual conditions. The walls of Jamba, a multi-level structure, are covered entirely by painted mandalas, tantric diagrams of the spiritual cosmos.
The intricate hand-painted murals are richly colored, but in varying states of decline. Painting the walls "was a vast undertaking," said Marcia. "There were many painters involved, working in extremely difficult conditions."
Damage from water and snow has weakened the structural integrity of the buildings, threatening the paintings' survival. "The buildings will probably collapse in 10 years if nothing is done," said Phil, professor of cognitive and linguistic sciences.
Decay set in several decades ago after the region's coffers withered due to the closing of an important trade route. "They could not afford to repaint the wall paintings and things slowly went to seed," Phil said.
During their first visit, the Liebermans took photographs to document what they had found. They used those photos to attract funding from the Getty Foundation for a complete photographic survey. In the summer of 1994, the Liebermans returned to complete the survey. But before they could begin, they needed the blessing of the locals.
"They were very frightened by photography," said Phil. "There had been thievery in the region. So we explained that by photographing the paintings and statues, they would have the contents of the temples documented to prove what was theirs. The head lama saw the logic of this."
Logic wasn't the only thing that persuaded the locals to open their temples to two Westerners. Before the king of Upper Mustang, the Liebermans presented to a group of monks and the head lama photographs of the temples taken during their previous visit. Each of the Nepalese in the circle raised the pictures and touched them to their heads in recognition of the sacredness of the photos. The gift cemented the locals' trust in the Liebermans.
Having gained permission, the Liebermans proceeded with their work. They spent two months creating a photographic survey of the paintings and statues of the temples. They also photographed a third temple that was a two-day walk from the gombas. "The temple of Luri contained paintings in a style that had never been seen before in this period," said Phil of the paintings that have a Byzantine influence.
Phil, a professional photographer who has exhibited worldwide, took hundreds of photographs to capture the paintings' beauty and minute detail. "It was amazing," he said. "The great hall was dark and when the flash would go off these paintings would just leap out at the monks." Marcia said the experience of being in the darkened temples with monks was "mystical."
The photography project required a great deal of planning. Because the region is decades behind the modern world and wood is scarce, the Liebermans had to purchase lumber in Katmandu and construct scaffolding, which then was disassembled to be packed into Upper Mustang. Before the couple left the United States, "I went to the Home Depot and bought all these drills and nuts and bolts," Phil said. "I can only imagine what it looked like when it went through the X-ray machine in customs."
The photographs will be archived in the John Hay Library. Marcia plans to write a scholarly book and the photographs will be placed on CD-ROM as well.
Now that the photographic survey is complete, the Liebermans have turned their focus toward restoring and conserving the temples of Upper Mustang. The local people "are very anxious about the buildings collapsing," said Marcia. "I spoke with the local people and told them I would do everything I could to help them." That has entailed writing letter after letter to various philanthropic foundations and experts to discuss the temples' preservation. They have located the foremost expert in the restoration of such structures, Frank Matero of the University of Pennsylvania, and have put into place a three-stage plan to shore up the structures. They now await funding to implement the restoration project.
The gombas have been named to the world's 100 most-endangered sites by the World Monument Fund, which may help the Liebermans' cause. "It gives the world notice of this site and puts it on the register of world-class sites," Marcia said.