Six-Armed Mahakala

In this splendid painting, Mahakala is depicted with six arms, the two uppermost hands grasping the feet of a flayed elephant skin and at the same time holding a skull rosary in the right hand and a trident in the left.  The middle right hand holds a damaru, and the middle left holds a lasso.  The two front hands hold a vajra and a kapala with human heart.  He wears a brahman cord made of a large pale-green snake twisted into loops over his belly, and a garland of large severed heads is strung around his body, dramatically framed by an encircling floral-print scarf with aqua lining.  Underfoot is his own emanation in the form of Ganesha.

Mahakala’s major attendants accompany him.  At the bottom center is Dugon Trakshad riding a black horse, holding a spear and a Kapala and wearing a long silk robe.  At the bottom left is the yaksha Kshetrapala holding a vajra and a kapala on a black bear. At the right is a two-armed Penden Lhamo on a wild ass, holding a notched wood club and a kapala.  Just under the lamas are the red yaksha Jinamitra holding a drum and kapala at the left and the black Takkiraja holding a drum at right.  Like Mahakala, each has a glorious flame halo in pastel shades flickering in energetic but controlled rhythms.  In and around the spaces and clouds drift fragments of skeletons, fantastic rocks, animals, birds, and other figures.  At the top sit the lama Tsong Khapa and his two main disciples depicted in splendid pale yellow and orange with light-green accents.  They identify the painting as a work of the Geluk order.  Rhie and Thurman note (op. cit.): “This huge, lumbering, six-armed Mahakala, his entourage, and three Gelukpa lamas coexist in an ethereal world of black cosmic space and pastel flames.  It is a masterpiece of the mystical black tangkas.”