Conch Shell with a Figure of Hevajra (1100s): Art, History and Details

Conch Shell with a Figure of Hevajra (1100s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

A royal temple like Banteay Chhmar was built for performing rituals and to honor images of gods, Buddhas, and other sacred or enlightened beings for the sake of the kingdom’s protection and ongoing prosperity. Conch shells were blown at the start of rituals to make the sound corresponding to the syllable om. The dancing figure of Hevajra, a Buddhist being of enlightenment with eight heads, sixteen arms, and four legs, has been worked into the bronze embellishment of the shell. Hevajra was elevated to a prominent position in Khmer Buddhism of the Angkorian period as the standard figure denoting the practice of rituals prescribed in a text called the Hevajra-tantra. The tripod stand with three serpents is probably not original to the shell.

Object facts

• Title: Conch Shell with a Figure of Hevajra
• Date: 1100s
• Culture: Cambodia, Khmer, Angkor Period, 12th-13th Century
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: shell and bronze
• Dimensions: Overall: 35 cm (13 3/4 in.)
• Collection: Cambodian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1977.176

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Annual Report for 1977." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 65, no. 6 (June 1978): 177–215.
• Woodward, Hiram W., and Donna K. Strahan. The Sacred Sculpture of Thailand: The Alexander B. Griswold Collection, the Walters Art Gallery. Baltimore, MD: The Gallery, 1997.
• McGill, Forrest. Beyond Bollywood: 2000 Years of Dance in the Arts of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Himalayan Region. San Francisco, CA: Asian Art Museum, 2022.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.