Graphic Governance: The Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s Vinaya Murals and his Projects of State Protection

By 1920, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama (1876-1933), had survived an assassination plot, two foreign invasions, and prolonged exile. Following his final return to Tibet in 1913, he sought to modernize and secure his territory through various reforms, both political and religious. Drawing on models of Buddhist kingship and Tibetan traditions of state protection, he employed the standard technologies of governance—temple renovation and monastic reform—but did so, remarkably, in a single project. Central to his undertaking was his illustrated commentary on the monastic code transformed into murals at two geomantically important sites: Ramoche and the Potala. In this paper, I consider the pictorial text and its murals within the circumstances of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s reign and the content of the historical record, contextualize them within his program of renovation and reform, and consider how the murals might have functioned more so as power objects than didactic diagrams.