TIBET, 17TH CENTURY

The present work depicts the Indian mahasiddha, Avadhutipa, one of the lineage figures of the Lamdre system originating with the eighth-ninth-century adept, Virupa. According to tradition, Avadhutipa was originally a non-Buddhist king who gave up all of his titles and possessions to become a mendicant after hearing the teachings of Damarupa; ‘avadhutipa’ is in fact an epithet meaning an ascetic, and his birth name is not known. Avadhutipa is one of the early lineage figures, and was said to have passed his instructions on to Gayadhara (994-1043). The Lamdre system became one of the main principles of transmission in the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism, and as such, sets of lineage figures were produced in both painting and in bronze imagery from roughly the thirteenth century onwards.
Images of Avadhutipa usually depict him in a typical mahasiddha pose, without much in the way of identifying iconographic attributes. The present work is incised with a short inscription on the reverse identifying the subject. There is no evidence that images of Avadhutipa would have been produced or worshipped in isolation, and are almost always made as part of a larger set depicting the entire lineage.
Although there are a number of sets of gilt-bronze Lamdre lineage figures, the present work most closely resembles and is likely to be from the same set as a seventeenth-century gilt-bronze figure of Vajra Nairatmya in the collection of the Rubin Museum of Art (acc. no. C2018.3.1), illustrated on Himalayan Art Resources, item no. 68463; both the present work and the Rubin Nairatmya have a tightly-waisted double-lotus base with sharply pointed lotus petals that give way to an unadorned surface at the back, where the inscriptions are rendered in the same places and in the same manner. The overall construction of both works is also consistent, with the two halves of the base and the figures above being separately cast and ingeniously joined together to form one consistent image.