29.5 cm. (11 5/8 in.) long

Ritual utensils are the essential tools of Tibetan Vajrayana Tantric Buddhist practice. Many are weapons that are wielded aggressively in actions that serve to drive away the delusions that act as impediments on the path to enlightenment. As a ritual tool the phurba is understood to be the embodiment of the Vajrakila Buddha, empowered to suppress all evil in the world. It is used by an officiating monk during a meditation ritual which culminates in an exorcism-type act in which the phurba is plunged into an anthropomorphic figurine or a symbolic representation as a triangular stand awash with a sea of sense organs. These negative forces are thus transfixed and neutralised, transforming them into a force for compassion. The rite is described in the Vajrakilaya Tantra, a Vajrayana text dating to at least the 8th century.The triangular-bladed phurba with three fierce Heruka faces with fangs bared and wearing skull crown at the finial, facing in three directions and converging to a single chignon ending in a knot piled high at top. The triangle-shaped design is expressly designed to symbolically consume the triple poisons of ignorance, greed and delusion that impede our progress to spiritual progress. Its triple-edged blade equates to the three-fold realization that comes with the negation of these poisons, and the awakening that follows, with diamond-like clarity. The heads of the three wrathful Heruka that sit at the top of this imposing ritual device symbolize the instrument’s ritual potency as an embodiment of the blood-drinking deity, Vajrakilaya.The stylised openworked hilt with Makara base secured to dagger, aligned with each of the peg’s three sharp edges, all worked with lavish details of copper and silver inlays on bronze and damascened iron body. The use of luxury materials and embellishments on the details, such as the tiny black-jade embellishments as the eyes of the skulls on the crown, makes it likely that this was an imperial commission – perhaps a gift from a royal court to an esteemed Tibetan lama. Moreover, the present work is the highest in quality among a very few examples of this type, this phurba was evidently created with the vision of an efficacious, yet aesthetically-imposing ceremonial tool.Compare also related very rare gilt-polychrome wumu three-faced phurba dated to 14th century or later, originally sold by Rossi & Rossi, New York, in 1999 to Florence and Herbert Irving, previously published and exhibited in New York, Rossi & Rossi, Sacred Symbols: The Ritual Art of Tibet, 24 March-3 April 1999, no.67, and subsequently sold at Christie’s New York, Lacquer, Jade, Bronze, Ink: The Irving Collection Evening Sale, 20 March 2019, lot 816.29.5 cm. (11 5/8 in.) long

Price estimate:
HKD: 1,500,000 - 2,000,000
USD: 191,300 - 255,000

Auction Result:
HKD: --