�y��vlog

Look closely, too, at the border of a Nepalese tangka painted in 1849.

By contrast, in the Tibetan section, nothing looks different—until you spot the specialized labels drawing attention not to the altar filled with statuary, but to the canopy hanging above; not to the figures in a tangka, but to the Chinese brocade border believed to house the sacred image.

And they served as models for a grand tradition of tangka painting under development in Tibetan and evident in rare 11th-century examples at the Met.

At the close of the tangka the presiding chief usually made a speech, appealing rather to the self-interest of his allies than to their attachment, promising them princely recompense, and sometimes giving them more definite promises, such as a woman of rank, as a reward for valour in the field.

The tangka was a review, held on the eve of leaving the chief village, and at every halting-place on the way to the battlefield.