Provenance:
Arnold Lieberman, New York
American Private Collection, acquired in 1992
Published:
James C. Y. Watt, The World of Khubilai Khan, Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty, Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition catalog, New York, 2010, pp. 108-109, fig. 142
This sculpture depicts a form of Mahakala that was particularly important in the Sakya tradition and is often known as the Lord of the Pavilion (or Tent). This manifestation, which is based on the Panjara Tantra, part of a larger text translated by Dharmapala in 983, shows Mahakala with bared fangs, staring eyes, and two arms and two legs, standing on a supine corpse and holding a knife and a skull cup.
The staff resting on the upper arms is one of the primary attributes of this manifestation of the deity and is understood to be the source of all other beings in the icon, including the birds, dogs, wolf, and small figure that serve as Mahakala's messengers. The four figures that flank Mahakala are standard attendants and include, clockwise from the upper right, the goddess Ekajati, the goddess Shri Devi, another manifestation of Mahakala, and an image of Vajrapani. While the ultimate stylistic prototypes for these two representations of Mahakala can be traced to the north-east under Pala dominion, Nepali variants, as transformed in the Sakya monasteries of central Tibet, most likely served as the more immediate precursors. The abundant detailing seen in the rendering of the flames that surround all of the figures, the lush jewelry, and the relatively-square faces are typical of Nepalese and central Tibetan art.
Compare a closely-related example, formerly in the Pan-Asian Collection, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2015.500.4.18) as well as the Mahakala at the Musée des Arts Asiatiques-Guimet, Paris (Jeff Watt, Himalayan Art Resources, item no. 85928).
