Consecration, Use and Contemporary Survival

A completed thangka is not considered ready for devotional use until formally consecrated, typically through a rite in which a lama inscribes or paints sacred syllables, mantras, on the reverse of the canvas, corresponding to the vital points of the depicted deity's body, an act paralleling the eye opening and animation rites performed for sculpted images in several other traditions, transforming the finished painting from a technically correct image into a functioning object of devotion and, frequently, of meditative visualisation practice, since practitioners of deity yoga commonly use a thangka as a visual support for generating the detailed mental image the practice requires. Thangka painting suffered severe disruption during China's Cultural Revolution, when a great many existing thangkas were destroyed and the tradition's open transmission within Tibet itself was suppressed for an extended period alongside the wider suppression of Tibetan Buddhist religious practice, a documented history of loss the tradition has worked to recover from since restrictions eased, through surviving master lineages both within Tibet and among the Tibetan exile community, particularly in India and Nepal, where major thangka painting schools and training centres continue to train new generations of painters and sustain the iconometric tradition today.