Architectural Restoration of Gönpa Gang

​The temple of Gönpa Gang is owned by the community of Chusang (Chuksang, Tshuk) Village in Lower Mustang, Nepal. Its exact location is 28°54'37.13" N  83°48'44.22" E., but it is on the west bank of the Kali Gandaki river while the village is on the east bank. Thus, when the river was high, from May to October, the temple was cut off from the village. This fact accounts for both the unique state of preservation of the monument as well as its poor architectural condition. Without direct access over the warm months there simply was no opportunity for larger maintenance work. In Summer 2019 a footbridge was built across the river to make the temple accessible year round.
This project is designed to:

• address the severe architectural problems of this under maintained but extremely valuable monument,
• strengthen its architecture to continue to withhold seismic events,
• consolidate all original features in the interior of the monument,
• engage the community in planning the future usage and long term maintenance of the monument, 
• prepare the monument for more intensive future usage, and
• plan future painting conservation measures.

Historical Importance

The Temple of Gönpa Gang is arguably one of the most important Buddhist monuments preserved in lower Mustang. Completed in the 1680s as a nunnery, it is remarkable for
several reasons:

• Among all the monuments in the region it is least disturbed through lateralterations. Remarkably, it not only preserves almost the full iconographicprogram as it was conceived by its founder, but also much of the original architectural features including their painting.
• The architecture of Gönpa Gang is unique within Mustang; measuring roughly 26 meters by 23.5 meters, the temple is also unusually large.
• The painted program provides unique insights in the religious atmosphere of Lower Mustang in the second half of the 17th century. At that time proponents of the Nyingma School of Buddhism played a major role in high Himalayan society, and it is clear from the iconography of the founder that the local teachers had wide connections, including major Nyingma centres and teachers in Central Tibet. On the other hand, Sakya School teachers and topics arerepresented as well, as are an impressive number of teachers in general, especially on the higher levels of the monument

• Accordingly, the iconographic program of the temple contains a number of unique features not identified elsewhere so far. These include unique aspiration deities (yi dam) on the ground and first floors as well as an extremely extensive number of teacher representations on the higher levels. Presumably, some of these depictions reflect the most current Nyingma teachings at the time.
• Unlike earlier monuments, this temple directly relates to the people of Lower Mustang, as the ancestry of the most prominent local families can be at least partially traced back to that time.
• Some of these connections are documented in the autobiography of the founder of this monument, Künzang Longyang (kun bzang klong yangs; 1644–1696), a locally sourced text which provides unique insights into the founding of the temple and the religious atmosphere of the time.

The monument has been the subject of a recent monograph written to support the future preservation of the monument:

• Harrison, John, Christian Luczanits, Charles Ramble, and Nyima Drandul, eds. A Blessing for the Land. The Architecture, Art and History of a Buddhist Nunnery in Mustang, Nepal. Kathmandu: Vajra Publications, 2018.