Provenance:
European Private Collection, acquired in 1997
Manjushri, the god of wisdom and knowledge, is depicted as a boy prince with a plump pre-adult physique adorned with jeweled earrings, armbands, crown, and the characteristic amulet and tiger claw necklace (vyaghra-nakha) associated with the deity. The boy’s hair has yet to grow into the familiar long tresses of the gods and appears as five short locks just reaching the crown band at the back of the head. The locks of hair represent the five syllables of a Sanskrit invocation to the deity (a-ra-pa-ca-na).[1] A scarf is tied at the waist, and a sacred cord (yajnopavita) is draped over his naked torso. Striped textile patterns on the lower garment are typical of Licchavi -and Transitional-Period (circa 400-1200) sculpture from the Kathmandu Valley. The beaded roundel patterns on the cushion cover depicting geese and flowers are redolent of Central Asian textile design; an almost identical design can be seen on the cushion of a Transitional-Period gilt-copper Sakyamuni Buddha.[2]
Dr. Pal notes that the description of Manjushri as a young boy (kumara) is continuously emphasized in the Indian religious texts (sadhanamala) and that it is the Newar sculptors of the Kathmandu Valley who in South Asia adhere most faithfully to this prescribed iconography.[3] Compare the squat boyish form of the tenth-century stone Manjushri Manjunatha in a Kathmandu shrine[4] and the tenth-century gilt-copper Manjushri Siddhaikavira in The Metropolitan Museum of Art.[5]
A tang is cast into the back of the statue between the shoulders, either to affix an aureole or secure the sculpture within a shrine. Although cast in the Kathmandu Valley the statue has evidently been worshipped in Tibet, with traces of polychrome on the neck and hair indicating Tibetan ritual practice. Nepalese statues painted in the Tibetan manner in the Jokhang and Potala depict a standing Siddhaikavira Manjushri with characteristically squat proportions and holding a flower and a lily seed.[6] This seated image of the boy prince with hands in the teaching gesture (dharmachakra mudra) appears to be the only recorded early Nepalese example with this iconography.[7]
1 Compare the five knots of hair on an eleventh-century Chinese gilt-bronze Manjushri in Denise Patry Leidy and Donna Strahan, Wisdom Embodied: Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010, pp. 120-121, cat. no. 25
2 Sotheby’s, New York, March 26, 1998, no. 83
3 Pratapaditya Pal, The Arts of Nepal: Part I, Sculpture, Leiden/Koln, 1974, p. 123
4 Ibid., pl. 33
5 Ulrich von Schroeder, Indo-Tibetan Bronzes, Hong Kong, 1981, p. 327, pl. 85D
6 Ulrich von Schroeder, Buddhist Sculptures in Tibet, Hong Kong, 2001, Vol. I, p. 499, pls. 160B-G, p. 507, pls. 164D-F
7 An eleventh-century Nepalese bronze Manjushri in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has hands in dharmachakra mudra, but the deity is depicted in the conventional adult form of the bodhisattva, seated in lalitasana, see Pratapaditya Pal, Art of Nepal, Los Angeles, 1985, p. 102, cat. no. S22
