Item: Garuda - (Nine Faces, Eighteen Hands)

Black Garuda, Nine Headed, Eighteen Armed.

Each of the nine heads depicts that of a different coloured garuda bird. Starting at the top left the colours appear to be black, white, black followed by green, red, yellow and then white, black and red. The two main hands hold a vajra and bell. Each of the other hands holds a different symbolic attribute along with the tail of eighteen naga serpents positioned to the right and left, turned to face the deity, and paying veneration with the hands folded at the heart. This mural is located near Phyang Monastery, a Drigung Kagyu establishment founded in 1515.

Also see a Naxi painting with the same Garuda subject and another painting with a detail that appears to depict the same Garuda with nine faces and eighteen hands.

Jeff Watt 9-2008

(Guru Lakang, near Phyang, Ladakh, India. Photograph Rob Linrothe. Demonic Divine, Himalayan Art and Beyond. Rob Linrothe and Jeff Watt. Rubin Museum of Art, 2004).