A Sculpture from a Himalayan Cultural Contact Zone

This small but beautifully modeled and impressively detailed gilt-copper figure of a robed woman or goddess has been tentatively identified as Dipamala, wife of the mid-fourteenth-century king Prithivi Malla of the Khasa Kingdom of western Nepal/western Tibet, perhaps in the guise of the great Buddhist goddess Prajnaparamita.

When it was illustrated and discussed in Himalayan art historical catalogs and studies several times since the late 1960s, the sculpture had been variously attributed to Tibet, Tibet under Indian influence, or Nepal.1 Although it carries two brief inscriptions on the top of the base of the sculpture, they are difficult to interpret. One, in Tibetan script, is the simple word yum, or “mother,” which was originally misread by several authors as Uma, one of the names of the spouse of the great Hindu god Shiva. This misreading caused confusion regarding the identity of the figure. The other inscription, in Sanskrit in the Devanagari script, reads “made by Dipamala,” eventually leading scholars to realize this referred to one of Prithivi Malla’s two queens, thus pinpointing the origin of the sculpture.2 

The identity of the figure remains uncertain. Yum, or “mother,” is part of a familiar Tibetan epithet of the great Mahayana goddess Prajnaparamita—“yum chenmo,” or “great mother.” This great goddess, the personification of a central Mahayana sutra, is usually depicted with four arms in Nepalese and Tibetan portrayals; she is rarely portrayed as two-armed, and the graceful arrangement of the hands does not correspond with known forms.3 Also, the goddess is usually portrayed in full lotus position, whereas this figure displays the more relaxed half lotus. Moreover, it is unusual for any goddess to be shown draped in the full robe seen here. Another very small gilt sculpture, similarly robed and from the same sculptural tradition, can be definitively identified as a donor figure, leading us to conclude that this figure may likely portray the queen herself (fig. 2). Nevertheless, the inscribed yum strongly suggests identification with and conflation with the goddess Prajnaparamita.

The Khasa Kingdom

The Khasa Kingdom of western Nepal was a powerful but short-lived dynasty that in its heyday in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries rivaled the medieval Mallas of the Kathmandu Valley in power and influence. Several times Khasa Malla kings invaded the three kingdoms of the Kathmandu Valley, while at other times, these kings visited the valley on peaceful religious pilgrimage.4 Their reign was remarkable for its bicultural and bilingual characteristics, sometimes expressed in bilingual inscriptions such as the two short notes inscribed on the Dipamala sculpture. The kings of this dynasty ruled over a large area that was home to high-altitude Tibetan-speaking Buddhists and Nepali and Indian Nepali-speaking Khasa Hindus of the middle hills. Historical evidence indicates that the lineage of this dynasty was disrupted at several points; to this day it is still uncertain from which group the ancestors of the various kings of this dynasty originated. 

Distinctive Metal Sculpture

Over the years since 1981, when this sculpture was first linked with the Khasa Malla queen Dipamala, other cast-metal sculptures with similar inscriptions have emerged. It was noticed that all of these images tended to exhibit certain similar stylistic characteristics, allowing them to be considered part of a group, which has been called Khasa Malla.5 Eventually, other sculptures, though lacking inscriptions, were included in this group because they also exhibited these stylistic characteristics, which set them apart from the well-known metal sculpture of the same period from the Kathmandu Valley. 

Without exception, these sculptures present Buddhist subjects. They share materials and techniques with the metal sculptures of the Kathmandu Valley, specifically, castings in almost pure copper luxuriously gilded by the mercury fire-gilding process, and occasionally—less commonly than in Kathmandu Valley sculptures—they are further decorated with inlaid stones. This similarity of technique suggests that the original artisans of this school must have emigrated from the Kathmandu Valley to one of the centers, not yet ascertained, of the Khasa domain. An examination of the architectural and sculptural evidence in stone remaining in the western Nepal centers of the Khasa Kingdom reveals little that resembles the luxurious and delicate style of the metal sculptures.6 That does not mean that a workshop cannot have existed there or in a nearby Buddhist center. Metal sculptors need very little to move from place to place: as long as there is beeswax and a good supply of metal available, a Newar metal sculptor can work anywhere.

Such migration on the part of the Newar artisans of the Kathmandu Valley has been going on for centuries. The Newar sculptors, painters, and architects and builders were renowned throughout the entire Himalayas for their skill, and they were willing to travel wherever there was demand and adequate funding to richly recompense them. In metal craft the Newar sculptors were considered the best, as asserted in one early Tibetan chronicle that listed the “Belpo” (Nepalese, or Newar) as the “li gyel” (king furnishers of bronze).7 

As we will see, the Khasa Malla metal sculptures exhibit certain specifically idiosyncratic characteristics that set them apart from the parent style of the Kathmandu Valley. It is likely that one great master may have been responsible for this distinctive style. But who that master was in the Khasa tradition, and where exactly he worked, remains a mystery; none of the inscribed sculptures so far known bear the name of an artist.

Lost-Wax Casting Method

All of the Khasa metal sculptures were created using the lost-wax casting process, which was and is the process used throughout all of South Asia. In this technique, a wax version of the sculpture is encased within a clay mold, with the inner layer of the mold being a very fine clay to pick up all the details of the sculpture, and the outer layers increasingly coarse. Several wax pipes are added to the original to serve as conduits to empty the wax and then pour in the molten metal. When the clay mold is dry, it is heated in an oven and the wax is poured out through these conduits. While the mold is being heated, the metal is melted in a crucible in a furnace. When fully melted, it is poured into the mold, filling the space previously occupied by the wax, which has been “lost” when the mold was heated and emptied.8

Examples and Comparisons

Ripumalla (r. ca. 1312–1314) was a predecessor of Prithivi Malla in the Khasa Malla lineage, although likely of a different family line. A small metal figure of a dakini, the dancing female goddesses of Tibetan Buddhism, bears a cast (rather than carved) Sanskrit inscription in Devanagari characters with his name in a simple invocation, “May Ripumalla live long.” Like the image of Dipamala, this diminutive sculpture is in glowing gilt copper (fig. 3). 

Another sculpture with a connection to the rulers of the Khasa Malla Kingdom depicts the most popular figure of the Tibetan pantheon, the Four-Armed Avalokiteshvara, or Chenrezig in Tibetan (fig. 4). This form of the great bodhisattva is known in Sanskrit as Shadakshari Lokeshvara, the Lord of the Six Syllables; the name refers to his mantra, om ma ni pad me hum, the best-known mantra of all northern Buddhism. While relatively rare in the Kathmandu Valley, this figure is ubiquitous in Tibet. The sculpture carries a Tibetan inscription on the front of the lotus base, inscribed in the Tibetan ume, or cursive script. The ruler is not named, as the inscription merely states, “The Yatse sovereign has offered this to the monastery of Lhatong.”9 Yatse was the Tibetan name of the Khasa Malla Kingdom in Nepal, so we know that one of this lineage gave this lovely sculpture to a Tibetan monastery, although the monastery mentioned in the inscription also has yet to be identified. 

We can see that this sculpture bears some significant stylistic similarities to both the little dakini figure and the Dipamala/Prajnaparamita figure (fig. 1). All three share a lusciously beautiful gilded surface, which is a hallmark of the Khasa Malla style, also seen in the work of the Kathmandu Valley from which the Khasa style surely developed. The dakini and the Avalokiteshvara display a similar treatment of the lotus base, notably in the shape of the leaves and a row of large pearls adorning the top rim. The Dipamala figure does not compare with this treatment of the base, as the footed throne is rarely found in the sculpture of Nepal or Tibet; it is more frequent in northern Indian Buddhist sculpture.

But there are hints of other stylistic vocabularies that set this tradition apart from that of Kathmandu. The bodies of both the Chenrezig and the queen/goddess figures are smoothly and fully modeled, and the hands are delicate and pliable. The faces in particularly are fleshy and beautifully full, with similar treatment of chin, mouth, and eyebrows, and the pupils of the eyes are delineated in both. Further, the Chenrezig can be seen to display two interesting stylistic idioms found almost exclusively in the Khasa Malla figures: the back of the base is left relatively unfinished, ungilded and painted with red color (fig. 5); and the joints of the fingers are clearly delineated on the outside of the hands (figs. 6 and 7).

Numerous examples of Buddhist metal sculptures have come to light exhibiting these various idiosyncrasies, and we are gradually learning more about this stylistic tradition.