![]() ![]() His sexual exploits included his hosts and promoters. He was a crazy saint who extensively travelled in Bhutan, who was fond of women and wine, and adopted blasphemous and unorthodox ways of teaching Buddhism. Kunley migrated from Tibet, was trained in Ralung Monastery in Tibet, and belonged to the period of Pema Lingpa and was his disciple. The often mentioned origin of the symbolic phallus is as a legacy of the popular Bhutanese saint Drukpa Kunley (1455–1529). What we know about it is what we heard from our forefathers." History Dasho Lam Sanga, a former principal of the Institute of Language and Culture Studies (ILCS), while acknowledging that there are no written documents regarding the subject, refers to the oral history: "But the worship of the phallus was believed to be in practice even before the arrival of Guru Rinpoche and Shabdrung Ngawang Namgyal . In Bon, the phallus was integral to all rituals. While the history of use of phallus symbols is generally traced to Drukpa Kunley, studies carried out at the Center of Bhutan Studies (CBS) have inferred that the phallus was an integral part of the early ethnic religion associated with Bon that existed in Bhutan before Buddhism became the state religion. However, rural and ordinary houses continue to display them. The phallic symbols are generally not depicted in community temples and dzongs, which are places of worship where lamas or Buddhist monks and nuns who have adopted celibate lifestyles live. Traditionally symbols of an erect penis in Bhutan have been intended to drive away the evil eye and malicious gossip. However phallus paintings can still be seen on the walls of houses and buildings throughout Bhutan, particularly in villages, and are credited as Kunley's creations. These explicit paintings have become embarrassing to many of the country's urbanites, and this form of folk culture is informally discouraged in urban centers as modern western Abrahamic cultural norms of shaming the human body and sexuality have spread in Bhutan's urban centers. The village monastery was built in honour of Lama Drukpa Kunley who lived at the turn of the 16th century and who was popularly known as the "Mad Saint" ( nyönpa) or “Divine Madman” for his unorthodox ways of teaching, which amounted to being bizarre and shocking. Phallus paintings in Bhutan are esoteric symbols, which have their origins in the Chimi Lhakhang monastery near Punakha, the former capital of Bhutan. It sometimes seems almost impossible to work out what’s going on in Gond paintings, in one of these drawings two women seem to be breaking out of eggs inside a bird while paddling with poles that have the eyes of snakes.Esoteric symbols in Bhutan Phallus symbols depicted on houses in Bhutan The background is usually plain but the physical forms, the people, plants and animals, are filled out with a huge variety of finely drawn textures composed of dots, circles, hatches and lines that bear a resemblance to the Aboriginal art of Australia. There is no perspective in Gond paintings. There is a soft curvaceous style to all the figures as if one form can morph into another at any moment. People can become trees, animals can be half snake-half bird. They contain people, animals and birds, trees and plants and a common element seems to be the interweaving of these elements of life. ![]() Their drawings and paintings are mostly concerned with nature and the mythical stories and the spirits of the world that underpin their culture. Over the last 50 years the Gond have taken to using vivid poster paints and some of the artists are now male. ![]() Like other Indian tribal artists they now also paint and draw on paper and canvas and their best work has been exhibited in international galleries. Traditionally a mother taught her daughter how to create these paintings and they would have used locally made mineral and plant colours. One of the wonderful aspects of Gond drawings and paintings is that nature seems to be in harmony, plants, trees, birds, insects and even humans appear to easily cohabit the same space. They decorate the walls of their houses with images of the world as they see it, with the belief that a good image produces good fortune. The Gond are a large tribal group mostly located in the central Indian state of Madya Pradesh. ![]()
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