Shamvara and A Dakini (c. 1100): Art, History and Details

Shamvara and A Dakini (c. 1100) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Two extremely rare bronzes of tantric Buddhist deities depict the trampling of the personifications of the afflictions that keep beings cycling around the world of samsara, moving from one unhappy birth, death, and rebirth to another. The male figure, a prominent form of a tantric Buddha in Tibetan Buddhism, is four-armed and probably once held a vajra and bell in his crossed hands. The female deity appears to hold a skull cup in her left hand, with a mace in the crook of her elbow, and she grasps an unclear object that may be a flaying knife in her upraised right hand.

Object facts

• Title: Shamvara and A Dakini
• Date: c. 1100
• Culture: Cambodia, Angkor, 11th century
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: bronze
• Dimensions: Overall: 14.8 cm (5 13/16 in.)
• Collection: Cambodian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1985.92

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Octagon, Spink & Son Ltd. vol XXII.2, June 1985.
• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1985.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 73, no. 2 (February 1986): 26–71.
• Bunker, Emma C., and Douglas Latchford. Adoration and Glory: The Golden Age of Khmer Art. Chicago: Art Media Resources, 2004.

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.