Large-scale clay sculptures representing the main deities are characteristic of the earliest Tibetan Buddhist monuments and particularly for the monasteries and village-temples built from the end of the 10th to the early 13th centuries in West Tibet and Ladakh. Commonly placed in the main niches along the central axis of the monuments these images of highest quality constitute a major source for the cultural and religious history of western Himalayan (Indo-Tibetan) art and early Tibetan art in general. Based on extensive field research and in situ documentation for more than a