… nowhere has it (the life of Buddha) been represented with so many details, with such a richness of scenes and with such a movement as here at Tsaparang. These frescoes have to be singled out as works of art. … Still above, the Buddha standing with the pindapatra in his right hand, indicates his resolution to deliver the famous first sermon. He starts walking towards Sarnath and en route meets the ajivaka Upagana, here represented with the ascetic stick: it is to him that he reveals his proposal to go to Banares to preach the law. The scene of preaching is, in fact, represented on the following panel. The Buddha sits on a throne covered by a rich canopy, with his hands in the attitude of the preaching mudra. On the basement of the throne are the traditional symbols of this culminating moment in the life of the Saint of the Sakyas namely, in the middle, the wheel representing, according to ancient symbolism, the first preaching; and on both sides two deer, reminding of the park actually called “the Deer Park”, where the famous ceremony was pronounced. Around him, in the act of devoted concentration and kneeling as a mark of homage, is a numerous crowd of every kind of creature: garuda above, nagas slightly below, gandharva and kinnaras, and then deities guided by Brahma and ascetics. The five emaciated yogins praying in the foreground possibly reproduce his first disciples. - Giuseppe Tucci: The Temples of Western Tibet and their Artistic Symbolism (1935). Photo - Weyer/Aschoff: Tsaparang, Tibets Grosses Geheimnis.