Weiner Mihályné szerk.: Az Iparművészeti Múzeum Évkönyvei 10. (Budapest, 1967)

HOPP FERENC MÚZEUM - MUSÉE FERENC HOPP - Horváth, Tibor: Reports on the Activities of the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts in 1965-1966

Fig. 5. Adibuddha Vajradhara and Adi-Dharma in yab-yum form. On the side of the massive, round drum shaped base there are two rows of lotus flowers, under them a wavy line, above them perpendicular grooves and a border of pearl-strings. The Vajradhara sitting in a yab-yum äsana is wearing a rich Bodhisattvagarment and jewels. The flower-patterned hems of its garment are spread out in front, on the base. On his arms, wrists and ankles there are bracelets and foot-rings, respectively. In his ears there are ornate ear-pendants, around his neck is a necklace. A five-leafed bodhisattva crown, beyond which from the blue painted top of the head three tufts of hair hang down upon the two shoulders and in the middle till the waist. He has urna and ushnisha. In his left hand embracing the shakti there is a vajra, in his right one a ghantä. The shakti wears a bodhisattva-garment of similarly rich make, with similar jewels and fiveleafed crown. In her right hand, lifted up beyond the head of Vajradhara, there is a karttrkä, in her left hand there is a kapâla. The top of the head and the middle tuft of hair are painted blue, the inside rim of the crown is red. The folds of the garment are nicely marked on the backs of both of the deities. Rich jewels hang down from their waists at the back. On the plate closing the bottom part of the statuette there is a four-pronged vajra, that is two dorje-s, placed cross-shaped. The statuette is beautifully gilded. Its height is 18,2 cm, the diameter of the base is 12 cm. Inventory number: 66.55. Similar representation of Vajradhara, honoured by the Yellow Cap Sect as Supreme or Primordial Buddha, is fairly rare. According to A. Getty it seems that there were no devotees of Vajradhara in China, Indo-China and Japan. (The Gods of Northern Buddhism. Reprint, Tokyo, 1962, p. 5.) On the other hand, Gordon in both of his works publishes the picture of a large-size statue of Vajradhara and shakti, cca 50 cm., bearing Chinese inscription (dated from the Ch'ien Lung period), in the possession of the American Museum of Natural History. Although this statue is corresponding iconographically to our piece, the details of the representation and its artistic drawing up are different. The base is a rounded off triangle, on this there are plastic lotus ornaments. The arms of the shakti don't embrace Vajradhara and her feet stretch out into the air backwards. The artistic formulation is more rugged, not so well-rounded, as is our piece. (A. K. Gordon: Tibetan Religious Art. New York, 1952, frontispiece and pp. 53,56. The Iconography of Tibetan Lamaism, New York, 1939, p. 50.) It is interesting that in both of his above-mentioned books Gordon publishes the picture of the statue of a very finely made White Tara (gilded silver, cca 25 cm.), on the base of which we find a lotus decoration similar to that of ours, with a little difference: here the similarly drawn lotus petals are placed in four rows and there is above them also perpendicular marking with lines. The statuette not only resembles our piece in the fairly rare ornamentation of the base, but also in the extraordinarily fine modelling of the deity. In the published pictures we can see well that the hem of the Târâ's garment is spread out in front, on the base, as it is on our piece too. (Gordon, op. cit., p. 64, p. 75, respectively.) Regretfully Gordon mentions in none of her books the origin of the statue. Wo can trace our prominently fine modelled statuette very likely to Mongolia, of the 19

th century. L. P,