This elegant sculpture depicts the moment when Buddha Shakyamuni achieves enlightenment: Having withstood the celestial king Mara’s temptations, the Buddha sits under the Bodhi tree in meditation as Mara’s armies make a final attempt at upstaging him. In his deep introspective state, Buddha touches the ground with a single finger and calls upon the earth to witness his enlightenment and ward off Mara’s armies.
Seated in meditation posture on a double-lotus base, with his hands in the earth touching gesture, the richly-gilt figure wears a diaphanous robe with a rice-grain hemline. The present work exhibits many features closely relating to the sculptural tradition of Khasa Malla, a kingdom that ruled the Karnali Basin in Western Nepal and part of Western Tibet between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. The figure’s face, for example, is absent of the Newari broad forehead, and his eyebrows are high and slanting. He has a sharp nose with plump lips, and his eyes have wavy lids that widen at the sides. These features exhibit a clear syncretism of stylistic elements from the Kathmandu Valley, Western Tibet, and Pala India.
The ushnisha or cranial protuberance of the Buddha has traces of ultramarine blue, an expensive pigment made from crushed lapis lazuli. This particular detail suggests that although this gilt-bronze figure was made and Nepal, it likely made its way to Tibet, as the application of blue pigments to the ushnisha was a uniquely Tibetan custom. Compare the style of the robe, the rendering of the face and the beaded edge along the double-lotus base on the present work with a larger gilt-bronze figure of Buddha sold at Bonhams New York, 21 April 2021, lot 20.