Cultural object
Vajrasattva (Cleveland Museum of Art)
Vajrasattva is a Cambodian bronze of Vajrasattva, a Buddhist being of enlightenment, dated to the 1100s to 1200s and held by the Cleveland Museum of Art.[1] He holds a vajra (a thunderbolt) and a bell, the basic implements of tantric rites, which were popular under Jayavarman VII.[1]
The object
The sculpture is bronze and measures 18.5 centimeters (7 5/16 inches) overall.[2] Vajrasattva holds the vajra in his right hand and the bell in his left.[1] Cords hang from the back of the crown and drape over the shoulders.[1] Cords of the same type hang from the back of the belt and coil symmetrically over the legs.[1] The museum's accession number is 1947.494.[2]
Iconography
In the Guhyasamaja Tantra, Vajrasattva is the supreme Buddha, placed above the five Buddhas (the Jinas) and regarded as the foundation of them all.[3] A passage quoted by Peter Sharrock notes that the Hevajra-tantra and the Samvara cycle both call the sixth Buddha Vajrasattva.[4] An inscription of 1066 from Sap Bak, near Phimai, opens by honoring the five Buddhas and then praises Vajrasattva as the sixth, the lord of the Bodhisattvas.[4][3]
Pia Conti writes that most Khmer images of Vajrasattva found in Cambodia or on the Khorat Plateau have a single head and two arms. Most hold the vajra balanced in the right hand in front of the chest and the bell (ghanta) in the left hand at the left hip.[3] A bronze Vajrasattva from Barong Lovea, dated to the 10th to 11th century, is in the Phnom Penh National Museum.[3]
A bronze mold found at Poipet has three registers of figures.[3] Sharrock writes that the mold "seems to record the underlying pantheon" of the Khmers of Mahidharapura. In his reading, Vajrasattva is at the center between Hevajra and Samvara, with the naga Buddha above and Bodhisattvas below.[4] Conti reads the center differently and identifies it as a six-armed, three-headed seated figure, most likely Aksobhya, with what appears to be Cakrasamvara on its left and Hevajra on its right. Conti also writes that the Buddha enthroned on a naga above them may perhaps represent the Adibuddha, the "primordial Buddha", or possibly Vajrasattva.[3] The Mahidharapura dynasty, founded by Jayavarman VI, took Angkor to the height of its power in the 12th century.[3]
Use in ritual
The museum describes tantra as a kind of Buddhism that relies on rituals and mantras to help practitioners reach their goals quickly, and likens that speed to lightning.[1] Tantric texts and rituals were used in Cambodia from the 900s and were especially prominent under Jayavarman VII. Other forms of Buddhism appear to have taken their place after the 1400s.[1] Sharrock writes that Cambodia turned definitively to state Buddhism under Jayavarman VII, after four centuries of state Saivism, at the end of the 12th century. His state temple, the Bayon, was originally Buddhist.[4] Conti describes Jayavarman VII as making tantric Buddhism the "state religion" in Angkor.[3]
The vajra and bell were the basic implements of tantric rites, which were practiced at Banteay Chhmar.[1] The museum suggests that small bronzes of Vajrasattva may have been taken out of a temple treasury for Buddhist rites that followed the Hevajra-tantra, a Sanskrit text brought to Cambodia from India. In that text, Vajrasattva appears at key moments of the ritual.[1] In Khmer Buddhism of the Angkor period, Hevajra was raised to a prominent position as the standard figure for the rituals prescribed in the Hevajra-tantra.[5] The museum's collection includes a ritual conch decorated with a dancing Hevajra, the Conch Shell with a Figure of Hevajra.[5] Of the many surviving bronze lustration conches, a dozen carry motifs of Hevajra and his yoginis, and Sharrock judges that they must have been made solely for consecrations to Hevajra.[4]
Date and origin
The Cleveland Museum of Art dates the bronze to the 1100s to 1200s and assigns it to the style of Angkor Thom, of the 12th to 13th century.[2] The museum's provenance record lists His Excellency the Okna Cakrei Pon, of Phnom Penh, first, followed by Heeramaneck Galleries in New York, which sold the bronze to the museum.[2] The purchase was made from the J. H. Wade Fund, and the museum accessioned the bronze on December 19, 1947.[2] The museum notes that its information on the object, including provenance, "may not be currently accurate".[1]
Display
The bronze was shown in Indian and Indonesian Bronze, organized by the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, from November 2 to 30, 1955. It was also shown in Khmer Sculpture, organized by the Asia Society Museum in New York, from November 28, 1961, to January 28, 1962.[2] The Cleveland Museum of Art organized Beyond Angkor: Cambodian Sculpture from Banteay Chhmar, which included the bronze, from October 14, 2017, to March 25, 2018.[2] As of October 2026, the museum lists it as not on view.[1] Under the museum's Open Access Initiative, the work may be copied, modified and distributed without asking permission.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 Cleveland Museum of Art, Vajrasattva (undated)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Cleveland Museum of Art, Vajrasattva, Open Access record 1947.494 (October 9, 2026)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 Angkor Database, Pia Conti, Tantric Buddhism in Phimai: A New Reading of its Iconographic Message (undated)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Peter D. Sharrock, Garuda, Vajrapani and religious change in Jayavarman VII's Angkor (February 2009)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Cleveland Museum of Art, Conch Shell with a Figure of Hevajra (undated)