Disclaimer: If you don’t have any familiarity with Naropa and Marpa, this post will probably be very boring. Fair warning, and apologies in advance.
As Buddhism was first transmitted to the West, most students had little information about it other than what their teachers provided. That situation has changed dramatically over the last thirty years or so, and one of the more interesting results is that in some cases received wisdom about various traditions has been, to use a little academic jargon, problematized.

Many examples of this abound in the work of Ronald Davidson, a professor of religious studies at Fairfield University. Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement and Tibetan Renaissance: Tantric Buddhism in the Rebirth of Tibetan Culture, two of his academic titles, uncover a wealth of material on the Bengali siddha N?rop? and his Tibetan disciple Marpa Lotsawa, two of the most paradigmatic saints in Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetan Renaissance provides information that not only complicates their respective hagiographies, it casts compelling doubt about whether or not their celebrated relationship ever actually happened.
The following is a historically credible first-person account of a trip to Tibet by a prominent Tibetan named Nagtso, very active in the 11th century transmission of Buddhism to Tibet, as cited in Davidson:
Because I went alone as an insignificant monk to see the Lord Atisha—and because he tarried for a year in Magadha—I thought I would go see the Lord Naropa, since his reputation was so great. I went east from Magadha for a month, as I had heard that the Lord was staying in the monastery known as Phullahari. Very great merit arose from being able to go see him. On the day I arrived, they said some feudal prince had come to pay homage. So I went to the spot, and a great throne had been erected. I sat right in front of it. The whole crowd started buzzing, “The Lord is coming!” I looked and the Lord was physically quite corpulent, with his white hair [stained with henna] bright red, and a vermilion turban on. He was being carried [on a palanquin] by four men, and was chewing betel-leaf. I grabbed his feet and thought, “I should listen to his pronoucements!” Stronger and stronger people, though, pushed me further and further from his feet and finally I was tossed out of the crowd. So, there I saw the Lord’s face, but did not actually hear his voice.
Interesting description of Naropa’s appearance, isn’t it? Haven’t seen any of that in a thangka before.
Apparently, in the 11th century there was some question of whether Marpa actually met Naropa; further in the quoted passage Nagtso claims he heard from “a direct source” that Marpa himself did not claim to have studied with Naropa, but rather with one of Naropa’s direct disciples, an Indian called Ganga Metr?pa. Given the “inconsistencies” and “discontinuities” (as Davidson describes them) in Marpa’s hagiographical biography, this is likely the case.
It looks like we may have to change the Short Great Vajradhara Prayer (aka Supplication to the Takpo Kagyu) to “Great Vajradhara, Tilo, Naro, Metri, Marpa . . . .” And get those Naropa thangkas updated.