Vaishravana

Vaishravana holds the Victory Banner (dhvaja) in his right hand and is dressed in golden armour as King of the Horses and Guardian of the North.  As bestower of wealth he holds a mongoose emitting a stream of jewels.  Vajrapani is depicted in front of the upper tier of Vaishravana’s palace, which is surrounded by the Eight Lords of the Horse (ashvapati), Vaishravana’s celestial army, each affiliated with cardinal and ordinal directions: Atavaka (southwest) holding a lance and pennant in the upper left of the painting; Purnabhadra (south) beneath; Manibhadra (west) and Samjneya (southeast) below; Pancika (northwest) in the upper right of the painting, holding a pavilion; Jambhala (east) below; Kubera (north) beneath; and Bijakundalin (northeast) in his characteristic attitude, turning his horse away from the viewer and with a shield on his back.

A red sun and white moon, with their Chinese symbols of a three-legged crow and a hare, are depicted on either side of the central figure.  A nobleman holding a scepter, with arms concealed within voluminous sleeves, stands to the left of Vaishravana behind his white snow lion mount, and a noblewoman with a canopy of serpents stands on the right offering a bowl of gems. A corpulent attendant in a white dhoti at the left of the lotus pedestal empties a leopard-skin sack of jewels that rain down on a ritual scene beneath: a lay practitioner seated on a cushion with vases, offerings, and a low table covered with a tiger skin.  A warrior beside a lake advances on foot, with an elephant and horse bearing auspicious emblems.

The iconography—including the Eight Lords of the Horse, the noble couple, the attendant figure with a sack of gems, and the warrior, elephant, and horse—is similar to a fifteenth-century Vaishravana collected by Giuseppe Tucci and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (acc. no. 2021.290), see Steven M. Kossak and Jane Casey Singer, Sacred Visions: Early Paintings from Central Tibet, New York, 1998, pp. 185-187, cat. no 53, where Casey discusses the uncertainties surrounding the identification of the noble couple at Vaishravana’s side.  Tucci believed them to be the king and queen of the nagas, who were conquered by Vaishravana and now offer obeisance, ibid, p. 185.  The naga canopy over the noblewoman’s head in this work—which is not a common feature on Vaishravana paintings—seems to support Tucci’s identification.

The Chinese-style three-tiered roof of Vaishravana’s palace recalls the reconstruction at the Sakya monastery of Shalu by Yuan (1271-1368) court artisans.  The running scroll design along the base of the throne resembles the Yuan and early-Ming-dynasty (1368-1644) motif commonly used on porcelain and Buddhist metalwork, indicating a date not much later than mid fifteenth century. The formal repeating cloud pattern background is reminiscent of the mature Sakya painting style, and a Sakya monastery commission is thus likely, possibly Ngor; compare the repeating background, the broad lotus pedestal, and the ritual scene on a fifteenth-century Mahakala painting[1] that includes a depiction of a Sakya hierarch tentatively identified as Ngorchen Kunga Zangpo (1382-1456).[2]

1 Marylin M. Rhie and Robert A. F. Thurman, Worlds of Transformation: Tibetan Art of Wisdom and Compassion, New York, 1999, pp. 307-309, cat. no. 97
2 Jeff Watt, Himalayan Art Resources, item no. 135