Unknown
Tibetan
Vajrabhairava (Yamantaka) Embracing Consort, 17th c. CE, late
gilded bronze with traces of paint
9 x 8 1/4 x 4 1/4 in.
SBMA, Museum purchase with John and Peggy Maximus Fund
2007.73
RESEARCH PAPER
This small bronze statue of Yamantaka (Vajrabhairava) is so beautifully rendered that one has to stop and examine it more closely. Two figures are in an embrace; one figure has 34 arms, 16 legs, and 9 heads, one of which is a buffalo head! Who is Yamantaka? What is the story?
The Cast of Characters:
A pious monk;
Yama, the buffalo headed God of Death is the bad guy:
Manjusri the benevolent God of Wisdom; and
Yamantaka, a wrathful emanation of Manjusri, is the good guy.
Manjusri appears here in his wrathful form of Yamantaka and conquers Death by manifesting in the same form as Death itself, donning Yama’s buffalo head so that when Yama sees this wrathful horror he is scared to death. In order to balance energies, Yama is seen embracing his consort Vajravetali in yab-yum, which is the powerful father-mother union, and which signals the union of compassion and wisdom. To use wisdom or anger without compassion would be a misuse of that power. So when Manjusri becomes this angry emanation of Yamantaka, the anger is deployed with wisdom and with compassion, which is a female attribute, symbolized here by his yab-yum embrace of his consort.
In legend, a holy man was meditating in a remote cave when robbers entered the cave with a stolen buffalo and cut off its head. When they realized the holy man had seen them, the robbers cut off his head also. The holy man put on the buffalo’s head and thus assumed the terrible form of Yama, God of Death and Lord of Hell. He killed the robbers, drank their blood and threatened all of Tibet. Then Manjusri, the wise and benevolent patron deity of Tibet, assumed his wrathful form, Yamantaka, which literally means Conqueror of Yama, with 9 heads, 34 arms, and 16 legs. He set about defeating Yama.
Yama retreated to his stronghold, a tower with 34 windows and 16 doors. Yamantaka closed the windows with his arms and blocked the doors with his feet. Imprisoned inside his tower, Yama had no choice but to listen as Yamantaka preached Buddhist Law until Yama repented of his cruelties, converted, and took an oath to protect all believers of Buddhism. As a reward, he was appointed King of the Law and Judge of the Dead in Hell (Landaw and Weber, pp. 124-127, Williams, p. 264).
The statue shows Yamantaka with 34 arms, 16 legs and 9 heads. Eight of the heads have three bulging eyes, widely gaping fanged jaws and orange hair, with eyebrows and mustaches bristling upward like flames. The central head is Yama’s buffalo head, which depicts Death itself and which Yamantaka has donned so as to scare Yama. It is surrounded by six wrathful heads and topped by a demonic figure and a slightly wrathful Manjusri. He is festooned with turquoise and coral studded crowns of human heads and a necklace of skulls. His arms and legs are ringed with multiple bracelets with vajras, which are diamond scepters of indestructible power. In the arms which embrace his consort, Vajravetali,Yamantaka holds a scull cup (Kapala) and a curved chopper (Kartika), as does Vajravetali. The cup holds solemn offerings to the deities while the blade cuts through demons with the indestructible power of the vajira handle.
The statue shows Yamantaka in a posture of fierce, forceful determination. However the hands and arms are exceptionally graceful. The hands are in the Karana mudra that indicates the expulsion of demons and removal of obstacles. Each hand originally held either a ritual object or a weapon of transformation. Most of these have been lost as they were cast separately. It is not known how they were attached.
Yamantaka’s top two hands as well as Vajravetali’s two hands hold the Kapala (scull cup) which holds the symbolic oblations of blood, organs, etc. for daily sustenance, and a Kartika (curved blade/chopper) to cut conventional wisdom through ultimate insight into emptiness. Yamantaka’s top right hands still hold several ritual objects, one of which is the Tantric Vajras Staff. The staff represents the union of Vajravetali’s wisdom with Yamantaka’s method. The other hands would have held a collection of ritual objects such as hand drum, bell, vajras, thighbone trumpet, and weapons such as axe, spear, bludgeon sword, and wheel of the Law, dagger, banner or noose, used to destroy illusions and obstacles.
The posture of both figures show the great energy that needed to be exerted to overcome Yama. The yab-yum union is a fierce, sexual, spiritual and urgent joining of wisdom and compassion to overcome evil. The layers of arms and legs give a feeling of hallucinatory extreme. The right legs are bent at the knee while the left ones are diagonally thrust downward. This is the classical Indian dance posture representing the flow of energy through the universe. The legs are crushing the four classic forms of beings: animals, birds, humans and gods.
The right leg is crushing a man and various animals (horse, camel, bull, buffalo, or donkey are possibilities) lying upon various Hindu deities, possibly Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Under the left leg are birds. In front is Garuda which is our primordial nature, and various other birds which could be a combination of crow, vulture, parrot, hawk, kite or swan. The birds rest upon more Hindu deities including Ganesh the elephant-headed god who removes obstacles. All of this fierce action is set upon a sun disc and a single lotus throne.
Tantric Buddhism of Tibet came through the Tantric practices of India. Tantric Buddhism is esoteric; it is unknowable and must be passed from guru to aspiring practitioner, it cannot be learned from books. Its aim is to eliminate the three Poisons of greed, anger, and ignorance that keep one caught up in the ceaseless cycle of rebirth. Rigorous practice can end this cycle in this lifetime. SBMA’s Yamantaka statue was a meditational image. The imagery is known to the initiated and meditators focus on these symbols. They use the fierce, wrathful powers of Yamantaka to guide them, one step at a time, along the path to enlightenment. The meditator assumes the wrathful powers of Yamantaka and uses them to overcome his own anger, ignorance, and greed. Yamantakana is one of the three main foci or Bodhisattvas of Tantric Buddhism. These foci represent the three main attributes of Buddha, compassion (Avelokitshvara/Guanyin), wisdom (Manjusri), and skillful measure or power (Vajrapani).
Lost Wax Bronze Process
Tibetan bronzes were usually cast with the “lost wax” process either learned or commissioned from Indian, Kashmiri, or Nepalese artists. Either these works were produced in the artisan’s native land or the artisans were brought into Tibet. Eventually, artists and/or their knowledge were incorporated into the Tibetan arts and crafts culture. The preferred bronze, made of copper and at least 1-2% tin, and sometimes some added lead, was usually of higher copper content and prized because of the rich redness that this produced. The pieces were usually hollow, which made it easy to put a relic or a mantra inside. The back of SBMA’s statue shows a rectangle of thin bronze riveted to the statue. Quite likely, this image holds a relic or mantra.
This image was made of multiple lost wax castings. The main body probably had projections or "tangs" along the sides of the body which were the channels through which gases and wax could escape. The end of the arms could be fitted over these pegs and cold soldered to the main body. The birds, animals, humans, gods, and pedestal would be cast and attached in this manner as well. The ritual objects and weapons would have been individually cast and added to the hands.
The next to final step was to paint it with lacquer mixed with the red pigment, cinnabar, a mercury compound. The statue was then heated and the gold leaf floated onto it. The heat causes the mercury to vaporize and becomes the amalgam that holds the gold permanently to the statue. The red under-color increases the warm depth of the gold. The statue would be polychromed and the jewels inset into the statue. The last step would be the eyes. Special ceremonies and rituals are usually held prior to the painting or insertion of the eyes. Often there would have been an “Eye Opening” ceremony when the statue was installed or dedicated. At that point the image is real to the initiated and eye-to-eye contact is a politeness as well as a way to establish a connection between devotee and image.
This image was very costly and probably used as a Tantric meditational image in a well-endowed setting. This could even be in the home shrine room of a wealthy Tantric adept. The wrathful, fierce image of Yamantaka was not to scare the viewer. Rather Yamantaka offers his full fury and power for the meditator to internalize and use to conquer the negatives of their own life. If the aim of Tantric Buddhism is to complete the path to enlightenment in this lifetime, one is going to need the most powerful aids one can find.
Even if the viewer may not be a Tantric practitioner, still one is compelled to look closely at this statue and the workmanship that artists of the 1400’s wrought in the Land of the Snows, so many years ago.
Prepared for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art Docent Council by Jean McKibben Smith, March, 2014.
Bibliography
Booz, E., “Odyssey Illustrated Guide To Tibet”, 2nd edition. Local Color Ltd, Hong Kong, 1997
Hillis, G., “Tibetan Art Collection of the SBMA”, Santa Barbara, March 2014
Landaw, J, Weber, A. “Images of Enlightenment: Tibetan Art In Practice”, Snow Lions Publications. NY, 1993
McArthur,M., “Reading Buddhist Art: An Illustrated Guide To Buddhist Signs and Symbols”, Thames & Hudson, 2002
Pal, P., “Desire and Devotion: Art from India, Nepal, and Tibet”, Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd., London, 2001
Penny, N., “The Materials of Sculpture”, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1993
SBMA Docent Council, “Five Gilt Bronze Statuettes”, no individual author, Santa Barbara, undated
Williams, C.A.S., “Chinese Symbolism and Art Motifs”, Castle Books, NJ, 1974
http://www.About.com/Buddhism
http://www.asianart.com/exhibitions/antwerp/essay/BuddhisminTibet.htm
http://www.netmuseum.org/collectors...13761: Cast for Eternity: Bronze Masterworks from India and Himalayas in Belgium and Dutch Collections, Nies, M.
http://www.freebuddhistaudio.comLecture59:SymbolsofTibetanBuddhistArt.
http://www.Tantricworks.com/yama.html
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki,vajrayana
http://www.yamantaka.org/componet/content/article/1-vajrabairava-yamantaka-an-introduction
SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS
This fearsome and intricately crafted embracing figures exemplifies the brilliant artistry of Tibetan craftsmen in creating a wrathful deity who is both aesthetically impressive and symbolically instructive to Buddhist practitioners. Vajrabhairava, or “Unyielding Anger,” is the wrathful manifestation of Manjusri, Bodhisattva of Wisdom, whose unbridled wrath conquers death (symbolic enlightenment). With nine heads, thirty-two arms which once held implements and sixteen legs, he thereby instructs practitioners to harness the combative demonic energies within oneself—ignorance, greed, lust, anger, fear and attachment to ego—and channel them towards acquiring the knowledge to conquer death, thus reaching enlightenment (nirvana), a cessation of death and rebirth cycles. The embracing couple, with their merging blood from skull cups, further serve as a metaphor for enlightenment which can only be achieved when the female (wisdom) is united with the male (compassion).
- India, Southeast Asia, and Himalayas, 2022
In Tibetan Buddhism, the deity Vajrabhairava embodies Manjushri, a male bodhisattva who represents transcendental wisdom. The terrifying aspect of Vajrabhairava in our piece stems from the fact that he stands for Manjushri’s defeat of Yama, the Lord of the Dead. This wrathful depiction of wisdom’s defeat of death gives us a figure that carries Yama’s attributes—adorned with skulls, and bearing a buffalo head—surmounted by the head of Manjushri. Vajrabhairava is here shown in union with his consort, trampling on animals and other deities.
- Sculptures that Tell Stories, 2019
Vajrabhairava (also known as Yamantaka) is the wrathful manifestation of Manjusri, Bodhisattva of Wisdom. He assumes a ferocious form in order to conquer the Lord of Death (Yama), a symbolic representation of the enlightened state nirvana, a cessation of earthly rebirth cycles. The embracing deities personify the path to enlightenment—a state that is only achieved when the duality of “wisdom” (female) and “method” (male) unite. Yamantaka’s extraordinary power emanates from a nine-faced buffalo head, 24 arms each holding a weapon (now missing), and the 16 legs striking a combative pose. His main attributes are the vajra (thunderbolt) chopper and skull bowl.
- Ridley-Tree Gallery 2016