rks of narrative relief and dramatic mythical composition. On the more intimate level of daily life, sculpture takes the form of the many fountains (fountain) that adorn watering places (pranali) of Nepal. Water spouts forth from makara (Hindu water monster with the body of a crocodile and the head of an elephant) snouts sheathed in gilt copper into reservoirs laid out with architectural dignity. As far as present knowledge goes, Newari (Newar) sculpture was dominated from the 8th century into the 18th by gilt-copper images. In their glowing splendour, the gilt, sometimes jewel-encrusted images embody the Buddhist quality of compassion that leads to enlightenment.Painting in Nepal is known from the 11th century on palm leaves and wooden bookcovers of manuscripts, some of them hardly distinguishable, at first, from the Bengali prototypes. The Nepalese style, less nervous, more conscious of the beautiful line and clear, compartmental order of the surface, is fully developed in scrolls, or prabhas (most of them, vertical), on cotton known from the 13th century. These scrolls are of two kinds: one consists of arrays of religious images with a large figure of the main deity in their midst; the other consists of a maṇḍala (mandala), the Hindu and Buddhist symbol of the universe—a circle enclosing a square with the deities disposed within. Narrative panels or sections in the margins of both types of scroll soften the rigour of the composition. While this Nepalese hieratic, or sacerdotal, style was at its peak, a narrative style developed in manuscript illuminations (illuminated manuscript) such as the Hitopadeśa (1594; Kāthmāndu) and horizontal scroll paintings such as the Rathayātrā Scroll (1617; Prince of Wales Museum of Western Bombay). Its planar intricacies reveal a new and vital aspect of Nepalese painting, an immediacy of emotion and action of its protagonists, the figures of which are placed on an opaque, velvety ground. The colours of these book illustrations and scrolls retain the strength and depth of those of the hieratic scrolls, which continued to be painted into the 17th century. The influence of the more realistic Indian, Rajasthani paintings, from the latter part of the 17th century, finally overwhelmed the hieratic style. Its disappearance was further hastened by a wave of Chinese-influenced Tibetan painting.Stella KramrischTibetan art comprises ancient pre-Buddhist decorative and domestic crafts and the all-pervading religious art that was gradually introduced from the 8th century onward from surrounding Buddhist countries and developed subsequently as recognizably distinct Tibetan imagery, sculpture, and decorative architectural motifs. In all its forms Tibetan art has remained subservient to special lay or religious intentions and has never become an art pursued for aesthetic ends alone. The religious art is primarily didactic and symbolic; the lay art, decorative. Therefore, while lay art may be easily appreciated, to understand the significance of the religious art requires knowledge of Tibetan religion and religious symbolism. Since the destruction of Tibetan cultural traditions by Chinese-trained Communists from 1959 onward, a greater interest has arisen in the West in the surviving Tibetan objets d'art preserved in museums and private collections.Up to the 9th century AD, Tibet was open to cultural influence from Central Asia, especially Khotān, and from China. For two centuries, up to the collapse of the old Tibetan kingdom in 842, the Tibetans controlled the whole Takla Makan and the important trade routes from the Middle East to China. Stone carving and metalwork were certainly practiced in the pre-Buddhist period, and Persian, Indian, and Chinese influences, all received through Central Asia, have been noted.The introduction of Buddhism from the 8th century onward led to the arrival in Tibet of Buddhist craftsmen from Central Asia and later from Nepal and northwest India, all of which were then Buddhist lands. Some cast images from this first Buddhist period may survive in Lhasa. After 842, central