Tibetan Bronze Figure of Vajrabhairava Embracing Vajravetali. 

Condition: Commensurate with age. 

Size: 3 x 1 3/4 x 4 in. 

#2304 . 

The wrathful Yamāntaka (known as Vajrabhairava in Tibet) is a yidam, a deity that presides over the great tantras of the highest yoga in Tibetan Buddhism. A guardian and destroyer of death (personified as the god Yama), he is usually represented with multiple arms and legs, sometimes more than ten. In most Buddhist traditions, Yamāntaka is a wrathful expression of Mañjuśrī, the bodhisattva of wisdom. However, in Chinese Esoteric Buddhism and Shingon Buddhism, Yamāntaka is the wrathful emanation of Amitabha, who adopted the form in order to defeat Yama when the Lord of Death began interfering with karma by claiming victims before their time was up. Yamāntaka tricked Yama into submitting by terrorizing him with a grotesque, many-limbed form, one even more frightening than that of Yama himself. Through this way, Mañjuśrī (and/or Amitabha) also exposed the illusory nature of the fear of death, as well as the unreality of death itself. Within the whole of Buddhism, destroying or “terminating” death is a quality of all buddhas, as they have stopped the cycle of rebirth called Saṃsāra. Therefore, Yamāntaka represents the goal of the Mahayana practitioner’s journey to enlightenment, and even the journey itself: On final awakening, one manifests Yamāntaka, the ending of Death. In most depictions he is seen embracing his consort Vajravetali (literally translated as “indestructible corpse” in Sanskrit), a physical embodiment of his shakti that straddles life and death for all eternity, in a tender or even sexual embrace that alludes to a dualistic totality encompassing compassion and wisdom.

Commensurate with age.