The Protector of the East

The most important room in a Tibetan-Buddhist monastery is the lha khang (lit. house of god), which is the main hall or shrine room. This is where puja celebration takes place. The main hall is closed with imposing doors and the lha khang is usually only open for celebrations, which can be as often as three or four times daily.

New Dabzang Gompa, Boudhanath, Nepal, 2018

The entrance hall is situated before the main hall. This is where people take their shoes off before entering the main hall. The front and sometimes the sides of the entrance hall are open to the outside, so the entrance hall is always open to the public. The walls are for the most part covered with murals depicting scenes and symbols from Buddhist mythology.

In Buddhist religion Mount Meru is the axis of the world. Meru is located  beyond the physical plane of reality, in a place of perfection and transcendence.
Sometimes one can see a representation of Mount Meru among the murals in the entrance hall.

Jokhang Temple, Lhasa, Tibet, 1996.

Four guardian deities protect the four cardinal points of the compass around Mount Meru. They have fiery haloes and are shown against a background of clouds. The North has an orange colored face and carries an umbrella, the East has a white or pale face and holds a musical instrument, the South has a blue face and carries a sword, while the West has a red face and carries either a stupa or a snake. Their Tibetan names are Chenmizang, Yulkhorsung, Namtöse and Phagyepo. They have different names in other languages.

The Four Protectors of the Cardinal Directions are always present in an entrance hall of a Tibetan-Buddhist monastery. They protect the monastery from harm. The protector of the East and the protector of the South are on the left of the entrance doors, and the protector of the West and the protector of the North are on the right.  Often a huge prayer wheel is also found in or adjacent to the entrance hall.

If a monastery is small and an entrance hall is lacking, the protectors are found on the walls of the main hall.

Kopan Gompa, Boudhanath, Nepal, at corner of stupa, 2018.

As a musicologist I am naturally drawn to music, musicians, and musical instruments. So from the day in 1996 I entered the Jokhang Monastery in Lhasa, Tibet, and first met Yulkhorsung (Wylie: Yul-‘khor-srung), the Protector of the East, I was hooked. I've been photographing Yulkhorsung ever since and I now know that Yulkhorsung and his fellow protectors are not only found on murals in the entrance halls to monasteries. They are also found on the four square corners of stupas as three-dimensional figurines. When an imaginary line is drawn from the center of the stupa to a protector at its corner, it should coincide with that protector's cardinal direction. The four protectors are also found in Chinese Buddhist temples and monasteries as larger-than-life statues. They are found as small statues in artisan's workshops in copper or clay for later acquisition by worshippers to give a place in their own house altars. And they are found

Giant rock painting beside road S203 Xining to Repkong, Qinghai, China, 2016.

in and on numerous other Hindu and Buddhist places: temples, fortresses, royal palaces, monasteries, rock paintings, thangkas.

Yulkhorsung holds a stringed plucked lute. In Tibetan-Buddhist monasteries the lute is sometimes a dranyen. In India it is often a vina. In China it can be a pipa.

Bod brgyud nang bstan brnyan ris kun btus, loosely translated as "Compendium of Buddhist patterns and images of the Tibetan people" is an image book with black-and-white drawings with examples for thangka and mural painters. It was published by Gansu Province Nationalities Languages Press, 2008.

For a Westerner like me, this book is handy to use as an iconographic aid. It has thousands of example images, from clouds and dragons to the six symbols of long life and the protectors of the cardinal directions. Each page is subtitled in Tibetan and English. Here I find an archetypal Yulkhorsung, that oddly is named Dhritashtra (which is the Indian name for the protector of the East, actually the correct spelling is Dhṛtarāṣṭra), although in the Tibetan spelling the name is written correctly. I'm showing here also the page with lute variations. Compare these lutes with the photos, you will see remarkable similarities.

The Yulkhorsung from the drawing book is facing to his right. There are variations in posture, where he is facing to his left, or straight forward.

East and South Protectors (with red face!), Aidao Nunnery, Chengdu, Sichuan, China, a Chinese Buddhist Monastery, 2016.

 

East and South Protectors, Tharlam Gompa, Boudhanath, Nepal, 2018.

All photos taken by me © 1996, 2016, 2018 Pan Records.