A glimpse of world’s longest thangka painting (4)

Photo shows barbola patterns of the world’s longest thangka painting in the Qinghai Tibetan Culture Museum in Xining, capital of northwest China’s Qinghai province. (People’s Daily Online/Xie Ying)

A 618-meter thangka, a traditional Tibetan Buddhist scroll painting, at the Qinghai Tibetan Culture Museum in Xining, capital of northwest China’s Qinghai province, is the world’s longest thangka.

Measuring a width of 2.5 meters and covering over 1,500 square meters, the huge scroll features more than 700 paintings, over 183,000 characters, and over 3,000 kinds of barbola patterns. The scroll is regarded as a Tibetan encyclopedia, as it depicts the history, religion, culture, art, medicine, astronomy, geography, mythologies, and customs of the Tibetan ethnic group.

Led by Tsondru Rabgye, a master of traditional arts and crafts in the province’s Xunhua county, 400 artists spent 27 years completing the scroll. Artists used mineral and organic pigments derived from gold, silver, pearl, coral, agate, saffron, and others in the coloring section of the scroll.

Since 2005, Tsondru Rabgye has been engaged in the creation of a companion to the present scroll. It is reported that the 410-meter companion was finished in 2019.