Footnotes

A GILT COPPER ALLOY FIGURE OF MANJUVARA AND PRAJNAPARAMITA
NEPAL, DATED 1779 CE

尼泊爾 1779年（據銘文） 銅鎏金文殊金剛及般若波羅蜜多像

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

Identified by the sword and manuscript he brandishes in his primary hands, Manjuvara is a three-headed and six-armed tantric form of Manjushri. Seated in royal ease (lalitasana), he is joined in blissful union by his diminutive female consort, Prajnaparamita, who embodies the sutra of the same name. Here, she comfortably mirrors her consort's seated pose as she pinches the stem of a blue lily in the gesture of teaching (vitarka-mudra).

The bronze's inscription, translates to:

"May it be good: The third of the bright half of Phalgun, in the year 899 (ca. February 1779 CE) was the day on which (this) statue of Mahamanjushri, made in their own names by Chikidhikara Vajracarya and his wife Jaya Lakshmi, residing in Dharmadahtu Mahavihara of the great city of Shankapura, (Mod: Sankhu) was consecrated. May it be good."

Bonhams is grateful to Ian Alsop for his assistance with translating the inscription.

This consecration by husband-and-wife donors supports a more romantic interpretation of the divine couple, as Dr. Pal observes, "when Prajnaparamita holds a blue lotus, the book placed on it is the Kamasastra, the manual of physical desire rather than the lofty Paramita treatise. Curiously, Manjushri is sometimes identified specifically with Kama, god of desire" (Pal,Asian Art At the Norton Simon Museum, vol. 2, 2003, p. 96, no. 62).

Although relatively slimmer in proportion than their Early Malla counterparts, images from the Late Malla period are often adorned with elaborate, flaming aureoles to stress the cosmic power of their respective deities. Examples of Manjuvara-Prajnaparamita pairs that share this double-layered arch can be found in von Schroeder, Indo-Tibetan Bronzes, 1981, pp. 389, 391 & 392, nos. 106F, 107F & 108C.