Item: Shri Devi (Buddhist Protector) - Dudsolma

Shri Devi, Life-Accomplishment.

The Speelman Shri Devi is an exceptional Densatil sculpture, both for its high quality of craftsmanship and exceptional state of preservation. Each of Densatil monastery's eight tashi gomang shrines, created over a period of 167 years, are said to have featured upwards of 2,000 deities in relief panels and free-standing sculpture. It is reasoned that multiple metal-casting workshops would have worked on a single shrine, particularly those that historical sources indicate were erected in relatively short order or when constructions might have occurred simultaneously. Such circumstances could explain why not all Densatil sculptures are made to the same standard. It can also be said of the corpus of remaining Densatil sculpture that aesthetic considerations of balance, agility, and refinement seem secondary to heft and vitality, and Densatil figures can at times appear a little brutish. This is not so with the Speelman Shri Devi.

Among the sculpture's many artistic virtues, Shri Devi's feet and toes are modelled slightly flexed astride her donkey. The animal is alert, well-groomed, and approachable. Flailing sashes draped across the beast show complex pleats and fine stippling in floral patterns. In her left hand, a magical wealth-generating mongoose disgorges a flourish of inset semiprecious stones and a Chinese ingot (yuan bao). Her earrings contain a finely cast coiled snake and a perched snow lion. This goddess is often depicted in Tibetan art with a more terrifying and gruesome affect, but here, there is a marked buoyancy about Shri Devi and her ensemble of mythical creatures. Regarding condition, Densatil monastery's destruction in the 20th century, involving the use of dynamite, resulted in many issues such as breaks, cracks, extensive losses, and stripped gilding (or regilding) among the relatively small number of sculptures that survived. The Speelman Shri Devi stands out in this respect as well, having retained most of its elements and its shimmering, wonderfully preserved, thick layer of original gilding.

The goddess Shri Devi is the earliest and most important female protector deity of Vajrayana Buddhism. As such, she is found in early Tibetan painting alongside Mahakala—her male counterpart. They are a pair and often found together in the Sanskrit source literature. In modern times, it is often said that there are twenty-one forms of Shri Devi, but this appears to be an attempt to organize the many variants of the goddess. Shri Devi is not a single entity with various forms but rather a category of deity with a number of different entities appearing as, designated as such, and functioning as a Shri Devi. The two most common entities that take this wrathful appearance are Lakshmi and Sarasvati, as they are understood from a Buddhist rather than Hindu perspective. In the early development of the Vajrayana Buddhist pantheon, much was borrowed and adapted from the popular Hindu gods of classical Indian literature.

Most of the earliest Tibetan sculpture of Shri Devi was created at Densatil monastery from the late 13th century through to the mid-15th century. Densatil was constructed around the hermitage and final resting place of Phagmodrupa Dorje Gyalpo (1110-70), who was regarded by his followers as an incarnation of Shakyamuni Buddha. The Phagdru Kagyu, an eponymous sect that formed around him, became Tibet's preeminent order in the 14th and early 15th centuries. As Densatil's wealth and political power grew, the order constructed in its main hall eight incredible stupa-like shrines, known as tashi gomang ("many doors of auspiciousness") upon which the reliquaries of certain abbots were placed. These multi-tiered structures were covered in Buddhist gilt bronze sculptures and relief panels depicting Tantric deities and mandala retinues at an altogether astonishing scale.

Each tashi gomang shrine had six tiers, with only minor iconographic changes evolving over time. The tiers were arranged according to Buddhist hierarchy, with the teachers and Buddhas at the top and with deities below arranged in accord with the four different categories of Tantric literature. The lowest tier depicted protector deities, wealth deities and worldly figures, including indigenous Tibetan mountain gods and spirits. The protector deities represented comprised four forms of Mahakala and four forms of Shri Devi. Based on a 14th-century Tibetan text cataloging the deities from one of the Densatil tashi gomang shrines, the four variations of Shri Devi were, 'Seventeen-Headed' in the north, Dhumavati in the south, 'Naked Riding a Black Donkey' in the west, and 'Life Accomplishment' in the East–the form represented by the present sculpture (cf., Luczanits, "Mandalas of Mandalas: The Iconography of a Stupa of Many Auspicious Doors for Phagmodrupa," in Tibetan Art and Architecture in Context, PIATS 2006, published 2010, pp. 281–310).

The 'Life Accomplishment' Shri Devi is wrathful in appearance with one face, three eyes, and a raging expression. She has four arms and holds a sword, butcher's stick, mirror, and a jewel-spitting mongoose. Wearing a necklace of freshly severed heads, she sits atop a human skin and a donkey. (Both donkey and mule are the common mounts for the different forms of the goddess.) On the proper right side is a lion earring. On the left side is a snake earring. The earrings can alternate depending on the form of the Shri Devi being described and are regarded as an important element of her iconography.

For Tibetans, Shri Devi originates from Sanskrit Buddhist literature, with a few descriptions found in the Twenty-Five- and Fifty-Chapter Mahakala Tantras, but several additional forms of Shri Devi were imagined and added to the Tibetan Buddhist pantheon. The majority of the additional manifestations were products of the Nyingma tradition of Tibet, which introduced new forms and teachings through its practice of 'Revealed Treasure' and 'Pure Vision' revelations. Currently there are at least a dozen known sculptures of Shri Devi from the shrines of Densatil monastery, and they include some of these Nyingma-derived forms.

Densatil sculpture has provided a tremendous amount of Buddhist iconographic knowledge on a host of different topics and subjects. The examples of Shri Devi are of particular importance because they are the earliest Tibetan works and additionally represent rare indigenous examples.

Following Estournel's comprehensive stylistic analysis of Densatil sculpture, the Speelman Shri Devi finds the closest parity with sculptures being assigned to the penultimate tashi gomang stupa, erected in 1431-2. For example, the feet, figural proportions, facial type, jewelry, and gilding correspond to that of a figure of the mahasiddha Saraha now in the Capital Museum, Beijing (Jean-Luc Estournel, "About the 18 Stupas and Other Treasures Once at the Densatil Monastery", in asianart.com, 2020, fig. 293). Moreover, Shri Devi's fringe of curls, the sophisticated pleating of her sash, the chasing, and the exact treatment of the foliate crown leaves compare to that of a Mahakala sculpture now in the Rubin Museum of Art (ibid., figs. 265 & 311; HAR 65208). Furthermore, a Vajravarahi sold at Bonhams, Hong Kong, 1 December 2023, lot 1813 has corresponding physiognomy and a matching double-strand garland of severed heads (fig.1).

The inscription on the front of the present sculpture is of particular interest. It reads in translation, 'the form of Shri Devi Life Accomplishment', and ends with the contracted name of Sonam Gyaltsen ('Sogyal'; bsod rgyal). Although not a rare occurrence to have a name inscribed on the base of a sculpture, it is however rare to have an artist's name on a Densatil monastery sculpture. A master artist by the name of Sonam Gyaltsen was recently identified through inscription to have produced a gilded masterpiece of Avalokiteshvara for a Sakya monastery in the Shigatse region of Central Tibet, c. 1430 (fig. 2; for more information, see Watt in Bonhams, New York, 19 March 2018, lot 3033). On stylistic grounds, this Densatil Shri Devi appears to have been cast around the same time. While Sonam Gyaltsen was a popular name in Tibet by the 14th century, there are enough similarities in style and technique between these two sculptures to argue the artist listed in each inscription is one and the same. Duojie Renqing and Xiong Wenbin (2021, pp. 86-7) have recently presented a strong case for this. The authors also discuss primary Tibetan sources that may provide biographical information about the artist, including that he may have authored an aesthetic treatise, since lost. Similarities between other Densatil sculpture attributed to the 1430s and the Sonam Gyaltsen Avalokiteshvara have also been raised (Estournel, 2020, fig. 378). Moreover, it has been suggested for some time that the vassal relationship between the secular clans patronizing Densatil and Sakya projects in the Shigatse region may have facilitated an artistic exchange between these monasteries (Heller, Tibetan Art, 1999, no. 82; also see Bonhams, Hong Kong, 1 December 2023, lot 1812). Therefore, with research ongoing, it is more than plausible that this Densatil sculpture of Shri Devi was also made by one of the great sculptural masters of Tibetan art whose work is becoming more and more recognized by scholars, specialists, and collectors today.

Jeff Watt, 1- 2024

Inscription
Wylie Transliteration: pal den lha mo srog sgrub sku. bsod rgyal lag pad rtse las sprul