Footnotes

A COPPER ALLOY FIGURE OF KAPALADHARA HEVAJRA
NORTHEASTERN INDIA, PALA PERIOD, 12TH CENTURY

印度東北部 帕拉時期 十二世紀 喜金剛銅像

Published:
Jan van Alphen, Cast for Eternity, Antwerp, 2003, p. 85, no. 20.

Exhibited:
Cast for Eternity, Antwerp Ethnographic Museum, Belgium, 12 April 2005 - 26 June 2005.

Provenance:
With Claude de Marteau, Brussels, by 1970s

This intimate casting of one of Tantric Buddhism's foremost meditational deities (yidams) depicts the 'Mother-Father' (yab-yum) union of Hevajra and Nairatmya, embraced in an interpenetrative cosmic dance. This sixteen-armed form known as Kapaladhara Hevajra, shows Hevajra holding an array of skull cups, with eight containing animals representing the Eight Diseases, and the other eight containing deities representing the corresponding cures. His consort, Nairatmya, is a tantric manifestation of Prajnaparamita, the mother of all Buddhas. Together they dance in unison, vanquishing disease and ignorance underfoot, and bestowing health and good fortune on the practitioner.

Created during the late Pala period (11th-12th centuries) in Northeastern India, the birthplace of Tantric Buddhism, this sculpture is among the earlier surviving representations of Kapaladhara Hevajra in bronze. Since most Pala sculptures that remained in India were lost or buried during the Muslim invasions of the early 13th century, the present work's un-encrusted surface and buttery patina almost certainly indicate that it was brought to Tibet soon after its creation, during a period known for Tibet's apprenticeship of Indian Buddhism. The application of cold gold, red, black, and white pigments to the deities' faces and hair was also ritually performed in Tibet.

The refined details and sensuous modeling are typical of high-quality bronzes from the late Pala period, achieving the impressive complexity of a multiarmed, multiheaded, and multifigured arrangement within a single casting. Each of Hevajra's eight faces is afforded crisp, handsome features, with six behind the main face surveying different directions, and an additional face emerging from his flaming hair just under the visvavajra finial. The thick, red pigments applied to his chignon are partially lost, especially on the raised edges, revealing the meticulous depiction of his hair underneath. Another superb, closely related example of this rare subject surviving from the Pala period is preserved in the Potala Palace, Lhasa, and published in von Schroeder, Buddhist Sculptures in Tibet, Vol. I, 2001, p. 303, nos. 102D-E.