Provenance:
California Private Collection
The top of the pommel is a five-pronged vajra emerging from a circular lotus with beaded borders. The oval grip is decorated with a delicate lattice pattern and ornamented with raised floral motifs. The guard is richly decorated on both sides with an auspicious kirttimukha, the fierce monster’s face with horns, bushy eyebrows, bulging eyes, and mouth open to accommodate the tang and shoulders of the blade. Scrolling foliate rhizomes emerge from the sides of its head, with a crescent moon and sun motif placed above the forehead.
Originally fitted with a proportionately small blade, this hilt symbolizes the Sword of Wisdom, used to sever ties to spiritual and temporal ignorance and to drive out the demons of negative thoughts and actions, particularly in the context of Tibetan Buddhism. Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, is often depicted with sword in his right hand, which represents his ability to cut through ignorance and delusion. Other rituals associated with Padmasambhava and Palden Lhamo also use the sword for ceremonial function.
Compare a related example in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2017.161) and another in the Josette Schulmamn Collection with a blade bearing a Nepalese inscription dedicated to Mahakala (see Nathalie Bazin, commissaire, Rituels tibétains. Visions secrètes du Vème Dalaï Lama (1617-1682), Paris, Editions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 2002, p. 146, cat. no. 105).
