Footnotes

印度東北部 帕拉時期 十一/十二世紀 錯紅銅喜金剛銅像

Published:
David Weldon and Jane Casey Singer, The Sculptural Heritage of Tibet: Buddhist Art in the Nyingjei Lam Collection, London, 1999, figs.13 & 14, p.21.

Exhibited:
The Sculptural Heritage of Tibet: Buddhist Art in the Nyingjei Lam Collection, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 6 October – 30 December 1999.
Arte Buddhista Tibetana: Dei e Demoni dell'Himalaya, Palazzo Bricherasio, Turin, 18 June – 19 September 2004.
Casting the Divine: Sculptures of the Nyingjei Lam Collection, Rubin Museum of Art, New York, 2 March 2012 – 11 February 2013.

Provenance:
The Nyingjei Lam Collection
On loan to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1996-2005
On loan to the Rubin Museum of Art, New York, 2005-2021

A masterpiece of Hevajra Heruka in bronze at this scale, this sculpture is remarkably well-designed. Structural posts needed to support the dancing figure balancing on the toes of his left foot, and to attach the long staff held in the crook of his left arm, have been entirely camouflaged from frontal view. Meanwhile, the sensuous modelling, attention to detail, and copper inlay used to enliven the eyes encapsulate the gem-like quality of refined bronzes from the late Pala period of Northeastern India (11th-12th centuries). These were the homelands of Vajrayana Buddhism, and the subject is one of the religion's earliest and most important meditational deities (yidams).

Here, Hevajra is represented in his solitary, two-armed 'heruka' form. He dances on a prone figure, wielding a vajra in his raised right hand and a skull cup in his left. His staff, terminating with a vajra finial and pommel, serves as an aniconic representation of his consort Vajranairatmya. Hevajra's flame-like hair has an effigy of his spiritual sire, Akshobhya Buddha, nestled before it. The arrangement is similar to another Pala figure of Hevajra Heruka sold at Bonhams, Hong Kong, 2 October 2018, lot 179, and a blackstone stele at the Nalanda Site Museum, Bihar (Huntington Archive no.3294). A famous stele of Hevajra Heruka from the 10th/11th century also depicts a similar lobed coiffure, and like the present sculpture, the severed heads around his garland are limited to the bottom half (Huntington & Huntington, The Art of Ancient India, 1999, p.399, fig.18.13). A slightly earlier Pala bronze of the female dancing yidam Vajravarahi, also from the Nyingjei Lam Collection, was sold at Bonhams, 16 March 2021, lot 305.

Since most Pala sculptures that remained in India were lost or buried during the Muslim invasions of the early 13th century, this Hevajra's un-encrusted surface and buttery patina almost certainly indicate that it was brought to Tibet during the chidar, a period between the 10th and 12th centuries, often referred to as Tibet's apprenticeship of Indian Buddhism. Particularly telling are the smooth signs of wear on the three skulls near the top of the staff, which evince the sculpture's history as a cherished icon. Contemporaneous and stylistically related Pala bronzes of dancing yidams surviving in Tibet are published in von Schroeder, Buddhist Sculptures in Tibet, Vol.I, 2001, pp.294-5, nos.98A-f.