The Mandala

In his 1929 commentary on the Chinese Golden Flower text, Jung named a palaeolithic sunwheel from Rhodesia as the oldest mandala he knew.

C. G. Jung, European commentary in Richard Wilhelm, The Secret of the Golden Flower (German 1929; English trans. Cary F. Baynes, London, 1931), section on the mandala, pp. 96-97 and following.

A ritual diagram of a deity and its palace, drawn or painted for Buddhist tantric initiation and meditation.

Sources2 sources

Scholarship

Steven Neal Weinberger, The Significance of Yoga Tantra and the Compendium of Principles (Tattvasamgraha Tantra) within Tantric Buddhism in India and Tibet (PhD dissertation, University of Virginia), 2003, Introduction; chapter 1, pp. 42-43The Compendium of Principles marks mature Indian Buddhist tantra at the end of the seventh century; its mandalas comprise deities and the palaces in which they reside, with rites of admission and initiation.
palaces in which they reside

Where this claim originates

C. G. Jung (commentary), Richard Wilhelm (trans.), Cary F. Baynes (English trans.), The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life, 1931, European commentary, pp. 96-97 and followingJung's 1929 commentary finds mandalas in medieval Christian art, Boehme, sand paintings, Tibetan Buddhism and his patients' drawings, and names a palaeolithic sunwheel from Rhodesia as the oldest mandala known to him.
the most beautiful mandalas are, of course, those of the East,