Cleveland Museum of Art

Shamvara

Date

c. 1100

Medium

bronze

Culture

Cambodia, Angkor, 11th century

Department

Indian and Southeast Asian Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

An extremely rare bronze of a tantric Buddhist deity depicts 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. This 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.

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