Dimensions: Height 30 cm Wide 26 cm Depth 20 cm

Weight: 2828 grams

Cast in two parts on a lotus base with the three-headed, six-armed deity seated in dhyanasana and in yab-yum with his consort Sparsavajra, her legs wrapped around his waist, he is holding the vajra and ghanta in his principal hands and his six-armed consort with her hands in various mudras, both wearing long flowing dhotis incised with floral patterns and adorned with armlets, bracelets and elaborate foliate tiaras, their hair swept up in high chignons:

The Qianlong emperor was a devoted Buddhist and a keen follower of Tibetan Lamaist teachings. He had bronze figures of the many deities in the Tibetan Buddhist Pantheon made in the Palace Workshop as gifts for the Tibetan hierarchy or to be enshrined in the numerous Buddhist halls built within the Forbidden City, such as the Baoxianglou and the Fanhualou. It is recorded that in the Fanhualou alone, built by Qianlong in 1772, that there were 786 images enshrined there.

Helmet Uhlig discusses this type of figures in On the Path to Enlightenment, The Berti Aschmann Foundation of Tibetan Art at the Museum of Rietberg, Zurich, 1995, pl. 110, and we quote: “In the Tantric Buddhism of the Himalaya region, the Vajrayana, we find Tathagatas and Bodhisattvas in many variations: multi-headed and many-armed, also in sexual embrace (yab-yum) with their female consorts (prajna). In this form they are part of the large group of initiation and tutelary deities – the Yi-dams. Some of them are figurative representations of the great Buddhist tantras that emerged in India between the 5th and the 12th Century as scriptures of wisdom. The oldest is the Guhyasamaja-Tantra (“Secret Union”) that is personified in this Tibetan statue as the Yi-dam Aksobhyavajra Guhyasamaja (Tib. gSang-ba-’dus-pa) in the “father-mother position” (yab-yum). The Yi-dam is also at the centre of the guhyasamaja mandala. Both three-headed figures tightly embrace each other with three pairs of arms each and both hold in their main hands crossed behind the partner’s back the vajra and ghanta as symbols of the male and the female – symbols of the enlightenment arising out of absolute emptiness and of the wisdom leading to it.”