Provenance:
Shirley Day Ltd., London, 1980s
Sotheby’s, New York, March 22, 1989, no. 356
European Private Collection
A shrine at the center of the mandala palace depicts the six-armed Vasudhara holding a sutra, a stem of grain, and a treasure vase (kalasha) in her left hands, her right held in bountiful gestures and one hand with the Buddhist triple-jewel emblem (triratna). The goddess sits at ease (lalitasana) with her right foot resting on an upturned kalasha from which flows a stream of ambrosia.
The shrine is filled with gems and golden emblems poured from sacks and carried in bowls by nature spirits (yaksha) above. Avalokiteshvara and Vajrapani sit to the left and right of the goddess, each holding a fly whisk (chauri) over their right shoulder. Jambhala and Varuna appear within jeweled niches at the base of the shrine, which is surrounded by Vasudhara’s entourage of wealth deities and Brahmanical gods. Sakyamuni Buddha and primordial deities are depicted above, and the five principal forms of the Pancharaksha goddesses appear in the lower register, together with the donor family to the right and the officiant (vajracharya) and his assistants preparing a fire ceremony (homa puja) to the left.
Narrative scenes often crowd a Nepalese Vasudhara mandala, but here the goddess’s palace and its multicolored rings of flames and lotus petals extend to the very margins of the canvas at either side and to the edges of the upper and lower registers.[1] Trilobate arches, with shrines within dedicated to Prajnaparamita and Pancharaksha goddesses, occupy the quadrants outside the mandala at the ordinal directions, complementing the cardinal directions represented by the four palace gates.
Vasudhara is worshipped in Nepal as bestower of prosperity and is regarded as consort to the king of the yaksha,[2] the spirits associated with abundance and fecundity and often invoked for a plentiful harvest. An epithet, sristanyayakshi srimani, refers to the goddess as the ‘milk-granting earth spirit and wish-granting jewel’ equating wealth and prosperity with livestock and bountiful dairy produce.[3] Vajrapani, seated next to Vasudhara, is here seen as commander of her yaksha army,[4] Jambhala in the lower left corner of the shrine as Jalendra “ruler of the waters,” and nagaraja Varuna in the lower right as the bringer of life-giving rains[.5]
The composition and style of the central shrine corresponds more or less precisely to that of the renowned Vasudhara mandala painted in 1365 by Jasaraja Jirila[.6] The niche and pillar design in the upper register is also similar in both paintings, as is the form of the lobed arches in the quadrants and the iconography of the goddesses within. Details are similarly drawn with finesse and charm, such as the playful yaksha spirits carrying gold and jewels to fill the goddess’s shrine. Close stylistic similarities with Jasaraja Jirila’s painting suggests this elegant Vasudhara mandala may also be dated to the second half of the fourteenth century.
1 Suchandra avadana and jataka tales are depicted in registers around the palaces of two early Vasudhara mandalas; see Pratapaditya Pal, Himalayas: An Aesthetic Adventure, Chicago, 2003, pp. 60-61, cat. nos. 32, 33
2 Ibid., p. 280
3 Ibid.
4 John C. Huntington and Dina Bangdel, The Circle of Bliss: Buddhist Meditational Art, Columbus, 2003, p. 411
5 Ibid.
6 Pal, op. cit., p. 60, cat. no. 32
