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Lot Essay
This bold and vibrantly painted thangka of Chaturbhuja Mahakala captures the idiosyncratic nature of Tibetan Buddhist art, with a composition filled almost completely to the edges with various deities, lineage figures, and hell-like charnel ground scenes below. All help to capture the power and imperiousness of the protector deity, Mahakala, and inspire practitioners’ reverence.
Seated on a prone figure over a lotus base at the center of the painting, Chaturbhuja Mahakala holds a fresh heart and a skull cup in his principle hands and a sword and trident in his upper hands. His consort, Chandika, sits in his lap holding a curved knife raised to the sky; both are clad in animal skins, and look intently into one another’s eyes. They are separated from the fray around them by an aureole of intensely-burning flames. They are surrounded by a bevy of retinue figures, including at right the horrific serpent-bodied Rahula, an embodiment of celestial events such as eclipses but also one of the Three Treasure Protectors of the Nyingma order. In the bottom left corner, two dancing skeletons wield bone staffs amidst an aureole of flames, while to their left, ferocious deities cut flesh from bodies amidst a charnel ground. Various siddhas and animals look on or feed from the flesh of bodies themselves.
At the top center of the painting, Padmasambhava sits on a lotus base amidst a bank of clouds, holding a vajra in his right hand and skull cup in his left, with the khatvanga staff resting in the crook of his arm; his two consorts, Yeshe Tsogyal and Mandarawa kneel at either side offering skull cups to the guru. The lineage of Nyangrel Nyima Özer (c. 1124-1192), the first ‘Treasure Revealer’ of the Nyingma order sit on clouds at left and right holding various implements, and the bodhisattvas Amitayus and Vajrasattva sit in the top left and right, respectively.
Seated on a prone figure over a lotus base at the center of the painting, Chaturbhuja Mahakala holds a fresh heart and a skull cup in his principle hands and a sword and trident in his upper hands. His consort, Chandika, sits in his lap holding a curved knife raised to the sky; both are clad in animal skins, and look intently into one another’s eyes. They are separated from the fray around them by an aureole of intensely-burning flames. They are surrounded by a bevy of retinue figures, including at right the horrific serpent-bodied Rahula, an embodiment of celestial events such as eclipses but also one of the Three Treasure Protectors of the Nyingma order. In the bottom left corner, two dancing skeletons wield bone staffs amidst an aureole of flames, while to their left, ferocious deities cut flesh from bodies amidst a charnel ground. Various siddhas and animals look on or feed from the flesh of bodies themselves.
At the top center of the painting, Padmasambhava sits on a lotus base amidst a bank of clouds, holding a vajra in his right hand and skull cup in his left, with the khatvanga staff resting in the crook of his arm; his two consorts, Yeshe Tsogyal and Mandarawa kneel at either side offering skull cups to the guru. The lineage of Nyangrel Nyima Özer (c. 1124-1192), the first ‘Treasure Revealer’ of the Nyingma order sit on clouds at left and right holding various implements, and the bodhisattvas Amitayus and Vajrasattva sit in the top left and right, respectively.