A stone Kagyu hierarch group, Tibet, circa 15th century

David Weldon and Jane Casey Singer, The Sculptural Heritage of Tibet: Buddhist Art in the Nyingjei Lam Collection, London, 1999, fig. 61.

The master’s cap is a type worn by the Karmapa and Sharmapa lineages of the Kagyu order, with upturned lappets, a visvavajra at the front, and an emblem above depicting the sun and a crescent moon. The lama is dressed in monastic robes with what appears to be a purba secured in the waist band, and is seated on a lion throne with hands folded together holding a gem-filled kapala. A large dharmachakra wheel is placed before the throne. The bodhisattva Manjushri appears beneath flanked to the left by a tantric adept wielding a purba, a Kagyu lama to the right, and two monks beneath. The carving represents a mountain setting with peaks enveloped in clouds above, a diminutive figure of Buddha at the apex flanked by bodhisattvas, and monks and Kagyu lineage holders surrounding the central figure.

The cloud design at the apex of the carving and the style of the central figure suggest a date of around the fifteenth century. Fine grained beige stone carvings are rare in Tibet during this period but a similar colored stone is used in a thirteenth century Tibetan carving of Vaishravana which is identified as possibly phyllite, see Ulrich von Schroeder, Buddhist Sculptures in Tibet, Hong Kong, 2001, vol. II, pp 894-95, pl. 207C. Compare a fourteenth or fifteenth century Tibetan stone figure of Acala in Gilles Béguin, Art sacré du Tibet: Collection Alain Bordier, Paris, 2013, cat. no. 55. See also a miniature ivory roundel formerly in the Wesley and Caroline Halpert Collection, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (acc. no. 2003.495) (fig.1), that depicts a Kagyu hierarch surrounded by Kagyupa lineage holders and deities, Marylin M. Rhie and Robert A. F. Thurman, Wisdom and Compassion:

The Sacred Art of Tibet, Tokyo, 1997, p. 139.