2-722-038 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

A Dakini, c. 1100. An extremely rare bronze of a tantric Buddhist deity depicts the trampling of the personifications the of the afflictions that keep beings cycling around the world of samsara, moving from one unhappy birth, death, and rebirth to another. This female deity appears to hold a skull cup in her left hand, with a mace in the crook of her elbow, and she grasps an unclear object that may be a flaying knife in her upraised right hand.