"who made its wooden stambha, bhumis, anda?" Greatly surprised, the people around realized that he was a born artist. When he was about seven, his temperament was sober like an adult. At school, he mastered his textbooks and became a good calligrapher in such a short time that even the venerable elders acknowledged their inferiority. He could memorize treatises on art as soon as he heard them read. Before he left Nepal for Tibet, he was already an expert in painting, modeling, and casting images. Mission to Yuan-China Historical background The event that brought Arniko to Tibet, and eventually to the Yuan court in Shangdu (today's Beijing), was Kublai Khan's decree of 1260 CE to Drogön Chögyal Phagpa, the fifth patriarch of Sakya sect of Tibetan Buddhism, to build a golden stupa for Suer chi wa (Tibetan: "Chos rje pa" or "the Lord of Dharma"), that is the Sakya Pandita Kun dga' rgyal mtshan (1182–1251), the fourth patriarch of the sect. Kublai's order was one of the indicators of his acceptance of Sakya teaching. The timing of the construction, 1260, is worth noticing. In April 1260, Kublai was elected as the Great Khan by his own supporters, to rival the claim of his younger brother Ariq Böke. Thus was launched a civil war between the brothers for the leadership of the Empire. In the twelfth month of 1260, he appointed Phagpa his Imperial preceptor and granted him a jade seal and the position of leader of Buddhism. By doing so Kublai officially acknowledged Phagpa as his highest religious authority and was obliged to patronize the Sakya teaching. In return, he expected the Sakya sect to provide religious sanction. The building of the stupa was not only a tribute to the Sakya Pandita but intended also as a project to win religious blessing in a critical year. Ariq Böke finally submitted to Kublai at Shangdu on 21 August 1264. Lhasa To build the stupa, Phagpa drafted artisans from Nepal. The iconographies and artistic values of the Tibetans had a close affinity with those of the Nepali tradition. Therefore, it was natural for Phagpa to turn to Nepal for gifted artists. He intended to recruit one hundred artists, but Jayabhimadeva, the king of Nepal at the time, was able to hand over only eighty. With his appointment as Imperial Preceptor in 1260, it must have been his vision and ambition for the