Trekking in Ladakh >> Ladakh Monasteries Tour >> Hemis Gompa
A drive of an hour or so beyond Thikse, Hemis is the Gompa best known to visitors, on account of the fact that is celebrated in the summer months. Thus allowing them a glimpse of an otherwise largely in accessible esoteric tradition. Situated deep in a gorge, Clinging to the hillside, forms the focal point of an oasis created by the slight widening of the gorge to allow a growth of willows and poplars.
Belonging to the Drug-Pa order, and founded by Lam Stag-Tsang-ras-pa Under the patronage of Sengge Namgyal in the 1630s, Hemis was in some sense the special shrine of the Namgyal dynasty, and a pavilion and walled garden just below the Gompa served presumably as a rest-house for the royal pilgrims. Today it is converted into a restaurant and picnic-spot. |
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A drive of an hour or so beyond Thikse, Hemis is the Gompa best known to visitors, on account of the fact that is celebrated in the summer months. Thus allowing them a glimpse of an otherwise largely in accessible esoteric tradition. Situated deep in a gorge, Clinging to the hillside, forms the focal point of an oasis created by the slight widening of the gorge to allow a growth of willows and poplars.
Belonging to the Drug-Pa order, and founded by Lam Stag-Tsang-ras-pa Under the patronage of Sengge Namgyal in the 1630s, Hemis was in some sense the special shrine of the Namgyal dynasty, and a pavilion and walled garden just below the Gompa served presumably as a rest-house for the royal pilgrims. Today it is converted into a restaurant and picnic-spot.
The annual festival takes the form of a dance-drama performed over two days in the Gompa's central courtyard. In it the lamas wearing rich brocade robes and grotesque masks and perform a series of solemn mimes, varied by comic cheekily caricature the solemn rites just enacted, to the great delight of the crowds. The drama reaches its climas in the dismembering of a human effigy molded out of Tsampa-dough.
This is variously interpreted as an enactment of the assassination of apostate Tibetan King Lang-Dar ma; as the dissolution of the body after death; as the annihilation of gross desires in the individual soul and its purification; or as the soul's dissolution and merging with the totality of things. The lamas themselves in words are clearly irrelevant to the impact of the drams on the imagination of the devout laity who flock to see it. Once in twelve years the festival includes the ritual exposition of Hemis's greatest treasure, an enormous Thangka, embroidered not painted, and adorned with pearls.
A part from the dance-drama, Hemis’s most interesting feature is its secondary temple. It contains some beautifully worked silver chroten, the biggest set with huge
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flawless turquoises and said to date from the first half of the 18th century, and a fine Buddha image. Damaged paintings on the back wall behind the chorten seen to be of an early date and a correspondingly individual style; the side and front walls have paintings of the thousands Buddhas and fierce divinities in the Tibetan manner .The Du-Khnag has no particularly interesting images, and its walls have been repainted in the last ten years or so. Others temples may not be open to the public.
