This short geographical and historical outline is intended to provide a general orientation for the region of Ladakh and to situate its iconographical and art-historical contents with their religious and historical contexts. 

Ladakh, the” Land of High Passes", is located in the uppermost northeast of the Indian subcontinent. Politically, it is a part of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, which borders directly with China and Pakistan. However, Ladakh is an ethnic, cultural and religious enclave within the surrounding Indian provinces and is more connected with Tibet and the neighboring Himalaya states. Ladakh’s territory originally encompassed an area of 98,000 km, but after India’s extended border disputes with Pakistan and China during the years 1949-62 only 59,000 kms. remain. The border between the province of Kashmir and Pakistan remains unresolved to this day, and massive military forces are positioned on both sides of the provisional line of Control. Ladakh, too, has served as an area for the build-up of Indian military forces. As a politically sensitive area Ladakh could not be entered until 1974; since then it has been opened for tourism and had been able to end its previous isolation during the winter months, due to the construction of an airport in Leh. Ladakh is a land of extreme climatic and geographical contrasts. Its alpine landscape with broad, high plateaus, interrupted by deep-cut, often ravine-like valleys, is bordered both to the north and to the south by the earth’s two highest mountain chains, the Himalaya and the Karakoram, with peaks up to 8000 m high. They create barriers on which moisture-carrying air-currents rain down, with the result that the climate in Ladakh’s interior is an arid zone, more like a mountainous desert. This landscape exercises its fascination through its unusually dry, clear air, its harshness, its wealth of forms and shapes and its intense stony-gray and ochre colours. Green oases are only to be found in the river valleys, where alluvial land can be cultivated with the help of artificial irrigation and where trees and bushes can thrive in the deeper parts of the valleys. At elevations above 5000 m, however, we find grassy, step-like surfaces that permit a form of alpine pasture economy and nomadic animal husbandry. Ladakh is drained by the young Indus River, which connects a series of other rivers and streams arising in the glacier regions as it emerges from Tibet. The Indus Valley is the region’s widest and most fertile valley; its habitable areas are home to its largest settlements (the capital city of Leh, 3500 meter) and its most important monasteries.

The region’s climate is as extreme a s the landscape. Great differences in temperature between day and night (up to 30^oC) give rise to strong countervailing and down-winds that frequently develop into storms. These winds have carved and worded upon the arid and unprotected mountain landscape since time immemorial and shape it into astonishing and fascinating forms. The valleys are free from night-time frost only in July and August; until recently Ladakh was entirely cut off from the rest of the world during the eight months long wither, because the passes were blocked by snow. All agricultural work and other out-door activities are limited to the summer, which begins abruptly and ends just as abruptly after four months. One serious problem is the sparse precipitation. People, animals and plants are almost entirely dependent on water flowing down from melting glaciers. The people in Ladakh have developed a unique and well-adapted culture in response to these extreme and difficult environmental and life conditions, resting on a resilient economy based on farming and grazing and extended barter of goods and services. The technical and social problem of survival was regarded as capable of being mastered through artificial irrigation, socially anchored community services and rules concerning mutual assistance. Because the brief summer period demands everyone’s participation during sowing and harvest, children, as well as monks and runs from the monasteries all lend a hand. The main staple food is barley, followed by wheat; here only fast-growing varieties can bring a yield. Apricots and apples as well as vegetables thrive in the deeper valleys. Some of the village families move to pastures higher up in the mountains with their domestic animals, sheep, goats, yaks, and dzo (a cross between yaks and domestic cattle), and produce the all-important butter and other milk products there. Material for heating during the winter is obtained by clothing dung and dry, spindly wood from bushes; wool-production is important for domestic clothing needs and for export. Until recently transport of local products was possible only on foot or on the back of animals. This is still the case in more remote areas. The Ladakhis of remote areas still make journeys lasting days or weeks to come to a market or to a monastery celebration. The passes up to 2000m highs are to be crossed just to get from one valley to another. In spite of these geographical hardships Ladakh had seven major trade and caravan routes, representing the shortest routes from India to Central Asia, and from the Middle East to China and Tibet which passed through here. The caravans could spend the winter in the capital city of Leh, and an important market and trade center arose there. Ladakh’s isolation from the rest of the world was overcome here, and cultural contacts were made possible by economic exchange. Tea, salt, wood, metal, silk and jewelry could be obtained in exchange for domestic surplus products. Religious teachers also came on these roads and brought foreign culture with them. It is from the reports of pilgrims and travelers that we derive our earliest knowledge of Ladakh, its inhabitants and their religion. The history of Ladakh’s settlement can be traced to the 5th century B.C. Burial finds and relief sculptures on cliffs bear witness to the early presence of Indo-Aryan tribes in this region; Dards, Balti and Mon. Together with immigrants of Tibetan-Mongolian descent they constitute a mixed population that speaks a Sino-Tibetan dialect. The royal residence was then established in Leh. The new dynasty gave itself the name ”Namgyal, (”Great Victor “), and in fact Ladakh enjoyed a period of cultural flowering under their rule. However, the country was repeatedly the victim of Tibetan and Kashmiri invaders and was forced to defend itself against several attacks of the Mongols. At the end of the 17th century the Islamic Kashmir provided Ladakh with military assistance against Tibet and received tribute in payment. In 1846 the kingdom finally lost its independence altogether; it was conquered and annexed by the Kashmiri Maharaja of the Dogra Dynasty and was thereby subsumed under Indian sovereignty. The king and the nobility were stripped of power and the residence of the royal family was removed to Stock. In 1947, when the Indian – British Raj was divided into Pakistan & India, the Maharaja of primarily Islamic Kashmir was unsure which of the two states he should join with. He appealed to India for assistance against invading Pakistani troops, which succeeded in repulsing the Pakistan’s attempted annexation but which has since then claimed full sovereignty over Kashmir, just as Pakistan does. Thus the succeeding conflicts were pre-programmed. The conflicts were pre-programmed. The conflicting parties repeatedly evaded the demand for a referendum. A truce-line (Line of Control) was drawn through United Nations mediation; since then military forces of both countries stand facing each other across the Line. Ladakh, too, has been a victim of the unstable political situation in the region due to the ever-recurring fighting and border conflicts with China as well. Pakistan ceded a portion of the Ladakhi province of Baltistan, which it had occupied, to China. China, furthermore, annexed Aksai-Chin, the north-eastern part of Ladakh bordering on Tibet, after military clashes with India, with the result that the old kingdom of Ladakh is divided into four parts today, and has lost almost 38,000 square km of land. 

One particularly drastic loss that Ladakh has had to suffer has been the closing of the ancient and vital trade route to Central Asia and China and the freezing the commercial traffic. Furthermore, it was a restricted area until the 1970’s. as a result, Ladakh became ever more dependent on India economically. India in its turn recognized Ladakh’s strategic importance and built up numerous military presence there. The Indian government spends a great deal on the construction of roads and bridges, power supply, irrigation and numerous other development projects and tries to bind the remote province closer to itself. The desire for autonomy has been repressed until now; however, Ladakh took a first step towards greater independence from the State of Jammu and Kashmir when it gained Hill Council Status in 1995. The character of the population has changed in the last decades: it has been influenced by the presence of Indian soldiers (allegedly in a 1:1 ratio to the number of Ladakhis), by Tibetan refugees, and by economically motivated immigration from Kashmir. The latter, together with the tourists, cause the number of inhabitants of Leh to increase many times over during the summer months. As desirable as the opening of the country in 1974 was for foreign contacts and tourism, it brought the Ladakhi population additional cultural and social pressures and insecurity as well. Due to changes in population policy, i.e. high immigration and even higher birth rates, resulting in part from the prohibition of the traditional polyandry, the ancient mode of economy, bound as it was to limited land resources, is no longer sufficient. New opportunities for jobs and training drain the villages of young people and men; this in turn disrupts the traditional, tried and tested structures of communal living. 

Another new problem facing Ladakh, ensuing from the political and military conflict between India and Pakistan, is the deepened alienation and even confrontation between Moslems and Buddhists, although these religions had coexisted amicably since long. Islam had come to Ladakh from Kashmir and had taken root only in western Ladakh, primarily in the province of Kargil. One might say that there is a religious border between Islam and Buddhism around 200 km to the east of Leh. In the capital itself about one-third of the inhabitants are Moslem, and marriages between Ladakhi women and Moslem men are take place quite often. But the trend towards fundamentalism has left its traces; within Ladakh there is now less mutual religious tolerance. With its Buddhist majority, Ladakh accuses the government in Srinagar of insufficiently respecting its cultural independence and integrity, and feels itself tyrannized and economically exploited by the Kashmiri Moslems. Ironically, the numerous stores in Leh offering Buddhist souvenirs are run by Moslem merchants from Kashmir. They earn their living by made in Srinagar by Muslim craftsmen. 

Ladakh is also the last refuge for Buddhism in its Tibetan form and here it is still practiced in its most original form. Even though its social and religious structures are changing under the pressure of modernity, Ladakh can still be described as an oasis of Tibetan Buddhist culture. Following the severe restriction of free religious expression and practice by the Chinese in Tibet and many of the monastery communities there were broken up and scattered, many monks and nuns fled not only to India, as did the Dalai Lama, but also to Ladakh, which offered them new homes in its numerous monasteries. The only difference in religious and social practice and policy was that, in contrast to Tibet, religious and temporal powers were always kept separate here.

The four great religious schools of Tibetan Buddhism are still represented in Ladakh, that offer their teachings in harmonious co-existence with each other: The” unreformed “Red Hat School of the Nyingmapa (”The Ancient Ones, “with their monastery of Traktok), founded in the 8th century by the great teacher Padmasambhava, the ”half-reformed “Red Hat Order of the Kargyupa (”Lineage of Oral Instruction“) for example, in the monasteries of Lamayuru, Phiyang, Wanla, Hemis, Bardan, and Sani. The Sakyapa School (Matho Monastery) and the Yellow Hat Gelugpa Order (the monasteries of Spituk, Tikse, Likir, Rangdun, etc.) that arose as the ”School of the Virtuous “in the wake of a Reformation carried out by Tsongkhapa in the 14th Century. Together with the Kargyupa it is the most important and most widespread order having its spiritual head is the Dalai Lama.

During and after the reign of the emperor Ashoka in the 3rd century B.C. in India Buddhism was spread with missionary zeal, and was brought to Ladakh, Tibet and China by way of Kashmir. Ancient reports describe Kashmir as the center for the spread of Buddhism. According to Chinese sources 5000 monks were settled there at that time. Buddhism spread continually over the following centuries. In 78 C.E. 500 Kashmiri arhats were sent to Tibet. Scholars such as Sambhota, who was raised in Kashmir, translated religious texts and introduced and adapted the Kashmiri alphabet to the Tibetan language, which up until this time had been a purely spoken language. Fa-Hien, a Chinese on a pilgrimage to India wrote in 399 C.E. that Buddhism was flourishing in Ladakh at this time. At the beginning of the 7th century C.E. (according to Chinese dating) the first king of Ladakh made Buddhism the state religion. In the 9th century, King Langdarma of Tibet, a follower of the Bon religion, repressed Buddhism, persecuted monks and destroyed their monasteries. It was only in the 10th century that Buddhism could be re-established in Tibet; the reintroduction took place from Ladakh. The great scholar of this era was Rinchen Zangpo, who translated many Sanskrit texts into Tibetan and is reputed to have founded a total of 108 monasteries and temples. He brought painters and craftsmen from Kashmir to decorate them. They, in turn had a deep and lasting influence on the style of Tibetan religious art.