Footnotes

A THANGKA OF SHADBUJA MAHAKALA
TIBET, 17TH/18TH CENTURY

西藏 十七/十八世紀 六臂大黑天唐卡

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

Shadbuja Mahakala is the principal protector deity of the Gelug school, indicated by the monks wearing yellow hats in the painting's top half. In this six-armed form, Mahakala emerges from the classification of preparatory rituals (Kriya-tantra) of the Mahakala-tantra as the wrathful manifestation of Avalokiteshvara. In his primary hands, he holds the ritual flaying knife (kartika) symbolizing the peeling away of negative thoughts, and the skull-cap bowl (kapala) representing the containment of impurities.

Many striking visuals permeate this painting, including Mahakala's well-proportioned face with piercing eyes, his crown of grimacing skulls, his spotted snake entwining itself below his belly, and his garland of freshy severed heads with various skin tones, some of which have their eyeballs loosened from their sockets.

The artist has gone to great lengths to emblazon the canvas, incorporating two small vignettes on the left side that are almost lost in the dazzling composition. One depicts a tantric yogi seated by a stupa in a cremation ground, contemplating a corpse being devoured by a wild dog. The other depicts a monk nestled in a secluded retreat underneath a rocky overhang, seated before a small altar table with a torma offering and other ritual implements. These two figures stand in for the monastic and a-monastic means by which the visualization practice of Shadbhuja Mahakala can be mastered.

Bygone masters of the Shadbhuja Mahakala instruction populate the upper register of the painting. Primarily these consist of the Indian mahasiddhas and Tibetan hierarchs of the Shangpa Kagyu tradition, whose founder, Khyungpo Naljor, brought the Shadbhuja Mahakala teachings to Tibet in the 11th century. However, having adopted Shadbhuja Mahakala as a core teaching, Gelug masters are effectively inserted into the Shangpa Kagyu lineage, at the start immediately flanking Vajradhara, representing the primordial source of the teaching, and at the end with the 5th Dalai Lama, Ngagwang Lobzang Gyatso (1617-82) pictured lowest on the left-hand side, and a young Changkya Khutukhtu lowest on the right, who represented the spiritual head of the Gelug order in Inner Mongolia during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911).

Compare the overall composition of the deity and the flames with an 18th-century thangka from the collection of Pia and Louis van der Wee (HAR 100634). Also compare with two other Mahakala thangkas sold at Bonhams, San Francisco, 21 June 2011, lot 8232, and Bonhams, London, 8 November 2018, lot 253.