TIBET OR MONGOLIA, 18TH-19TH CENTURY

This impressive phurbha is exceedingly rare for its monumental size, far too large to actually be wielded for its original ritual purpose. Instead, it rests in a specially-cast circular base depicted with the roiling waves of an ocean, with three inverted faces of horned dragons supporting the tip of the three-sided blade. The phurbha itself is topped with three wrathful deities wearing skull tiaras, the curved 'handle' of the peg cast with raised lantsa characters and bands of vajras, and a multi-faceted knob also with lantsa characters and crossed vajras; all three sections are separated with double-lotus bases, the petals carried out in a typically eighteenth-century Chinese manner. The three-sided blade emerges from the mouths of three additional horned dragons, and each side of the iron blade is damascened in gilding with an image of Eleven-Headed Avalokiteshvara above a coiled serpent, as well as a six-character mark, Da Qing Qianlong Nian Zhi, as well as additional lantsa characters. Although the mark is likely apocryphal, it suggests the work was perhaps made for the Chinese market. Compare the large overall size, the dark bronze patina, and use of Chinese imagery such as the horned dragons with another large kila illustrated by John C. Huntington in Circle of Bliss: Buddhist Meditational Art, Columbus, p. 509, cat. no. 157.