TIBET, PALA STYLE, 13TH CENTURY

The ‘Vajra Being’ depicted here is a primordial buddha as well as a highly-accomplished bodhisattva, with a perfected understanding of ultimate truth. He is the personification of the primary symbol of The Lighting Path. This important Tibetan Buddhist deity is the primary and ceaseless source of Vajrayana teachings. He manifests in the sambhogakaya (Tib. long-ku) or celestial form or to assist in liberating all sentient beings from the undesirable cycle of rebirth in samsara. The mantra of Vajrasattva (known in Tibetan as Dorje Sempa) has the power to cleanse any sentient being of past transgressions. He holds a ghanta (Tib. drilbu) symbolizing the female aspect of wisdom and a vajra (Tib. dorje) symbolizing the male qualities of skillful means and compassion. Together, these aspects indicate Vajrasattva’s fully enlightened status.
The present work follows closely the Pala style of Northeastern India, which permeated into Tibet in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Artisans from India likely helped to establish workshops in Tibet following the fall of the great Buddhist institutions in Northeastern India at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Compare the treatment of the face and lotus base with a bronze figure of Vajrapani in the Nyingjei Lam collection, illustrated by D. Weldon in The Sculptural Heritage of Tibet: Buddhist Art in the Nyingjei Lam Collection, London, 1999, p. 56, fig. 19.