A DATED GILT-BRONZE FIGURE OF A BODHISATTVA NORTHERN WEI DYNASTY, DATED 495

cast standing with the right arm raised, wearing long robes falling into neat pleats, the face with a meditative expression with hair piled up into a high chignon, all before a leaf-shaped mandorla incised to the front with flame-like projections, the reverse with a Buddha seated in a temple flanked by two attendants and accompanied with an inscription, all supported on a domed base raised on a four-legged plinth, the side of the base inscribed and dated to nineteenth year of Taihe (corresponding to 495), wood stand and Japanese wood box

Tokubetsu tenji Rikuchō jidai no Kondōbutsu [Gilt-bronze statues from the Six Dynasties], Kuboso Memorial Museum of Arts, Osaka, 1991, cat. no. 41.

Saburo Matsubara, Chūgoku bukkyō chōkokushi ron [Historical discussion of Chinese Buddhist sculpture], Tokyo, 1995, vol. 1, pl. 77d-e.

The bodhisattva is in good condition with the exception of a slight lean to the right, minor pitting due to burial and small areas of malachite and cuprite encrustation to the front and back, and scratches and rubbing to the gilded decoration particularly around the base.
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The inscription on this piece may be translated:

Commissioned by… from Lingzhou county [Hebei province] in memory of his brother who passed away.

The 23^rd of the 2^nd month of the 19^th year of Taihe reign [corresponding to AD 495].

The present piece belongs to a distinct group of bronze bodhisattva cast wearing monastic robes draped in the Hellenistic-influenced Gupta style with long looping swathes of cloth rising from the legs and across the shoulders. Compare four bronze figures of this type with Northern Wei dates between AD 482 and 500, illustrated in Saburo Matsubara, Chūgoku bukkyō chōkokushi ron [Historical discussion of Chinese Buddhist sculpture], Tokyo, 1995, vol. 1, pl. 77, no. a, c and f; and another dated equivalent to AD 484, unearthed in Boxing county, Shandong province, and now in the Boxing County Museum, published in Ji Chong Jian, The Buddhist Bronzes, Taipei, 1994, pl. 40.