Item: Yama Dharmaraja (Buddhist Protector) - Inner

Yama Dharmaraja, Inner (Tibetan: shin je cho gyal, nang wa. English: the Inner Lord of Death, King of the Law): wrathful emanation of the bodhisattva Manjushri and the inner protector for the Vajrabhairava cycle of Tantra.

Tibetan: Shin je cho gyal

Appearaing in the form of a raksha daemon, wrathful, dark blue in colour, he has one face and two hands. The mouth is red and gaping, three round eyes glare forward and the hair, yellow and bristling, streams upward. The right hand holds outstretched to the side a flaying knife with a curved blade. The left held to the heart clutches a blood filled skullcup. Adorned with a crown of five skulls, gold, jewels and red ribbons, he is decorated with earrings, a necklace of freshly severed heads and a tiger skin skirt. In a wrathful posture with the left leg bent and the right straight, treading upon a dark corpse-like figure, above a sun disc, lotus seat and a blood filled three-sided dharmadayo, he stands surrounded by black-red flames of pristine awareness.

At the sides are four attendant figures, red, black, white and yellow, each with a buffalo head and two hands, standing in a fearsome posture atop a buffalo seat. A single white skullcup filled with the offering of the five senses is proffered in front while red curls of flame and black smoke fill the background.

Jeff Watt 2-2000