Cleveland Museum of Art

Shamvara and A Dakini

Date

c. 1100

Medium

bronze

Culture

Cambodia, Angkor, 11th century

Department

Indian and Southeast Asian Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Two extremely rare bronzes of tantric Buddhist deities depict the trampling of the personifications of the afflictions that keep beings cycling around the world of samsara, moving from one unhappy birth, death, and rebirth to another. The male figure, a prominent form of a tantric Buddha in Tibetan Buddhism, is four-armed and probably once held a vajra and bell in his crossed hands. The female deity appears to hold a skull cup in her left hand, with a mace in the crook of her elbow, and she grasps an unclear object that may be a flaying knife in her upraised right hand.

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