A copper-alloy figure of Kurukulla Western Himalayas, ca. 11th century | 喜馬拉雅西部 約十一世紀 銅合金咕嚕咕列佛母坐像

The three-headed and six-armed tantric Buddhist meditation goddess holds an arrow and bow in her uppermost left and right hands, a vajra sceptre and lotus flower in the middle, her principle right hand in abhaya mudra, the gesture of fearlessness, and the left before her heart in tarjani mudra, the gesture of warning. The goddess is seated in the yogic posture, paryankasana, on a lotus surrounded by naga with hands held in anjali mudra, a gesture of offering and reverence. An aureole of flames rises behind the goddess in a trilobate format typical of northern Indian Himalayan styles such as a Prajnaparamita in the British Museum, see Auboyer and Béguin, Dieux et démons de l’Himâlaya, Paris, 1977, cat. 37. Kurukulla wears a tight-fitting bodice shaped to reveal the navel and the top of the breasts in the fashion common throughout early Kashmir and western Himalayan depictions of female deities from around the ninth century, see Siudmak, The Hindu-Buddhist Sculpture of Kashmir and its Influences, Leiden, Boston, 2013, p. 440. No other example of this form of Kurukulla is recorded from Himalayan regions, but a rare four-armed seated emanation of the goddess is depicted in an eastern Indian Pala period (8th-12th c.) gilt copper figure formerly in the Nyingjei Lam Collection, sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, October 3, 2017, lot 3106.