YONGLE-XUANDE PERIOD (1403-1435)

Panjarnata Mahakala is often, but not always, depicted balancing a baton, Gandhi, in the crooks of his arms, from which all other forms of Mahakala are thought to emanate. However, even in the absence of the baton, the single-faced, two-armed wrathful deity holding the kartri and kapala is unmistakably Panjarnata Mahakala, the ‘Lord of the Pavilion’. Panjarnata Mahakala is the special protector of the Hevajra cycle of Tantras in the Sakya School; his iconography and
rituals are found in the 18th chapter of the Vajra Panjara Tantra, as well as in chapters 25 and 50 of the Mahakala Tantras
Although the current figure is not inscribed with a reign mark, it closely relates in style to the imperial gilt-bronze figures of the Yongle and Xuande periods. Compare with a very similar gilt-iron figure of Panjaranata Mahakala with a Yongle mark in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in the Splendors from the Yongle and Xuande Reigns of China’s Ming Dynasty: Classics of the Forbidden City, Beijing, 2012, p.247 no. 133 (fig. 1); and another similar gilt-bronze figure of Panjaranata Mahakala from the Yongle period in the Potala Palace, Tibet, illustrated in The Times and the Styles of Statues of Buddha in Chinese Buddhism, Beijing, 2010, p.216, fig.234 (fig. 2).