Crown leaf
gilt wood and pigment
West Tibet
13th century
height 24.2 cm – 9 ½ in each

This carved panel once served as the central leaf in a Tibetan Buddhist ritual crown. The main image represents the enthroned figure of Vairocana Buddha in bodyagri mudra. Vairocana, The Illuminator, often appears in Himalayan art as part of a quintad of celestial Buddhas, each associated with a particular aspect of the human personality and many other attributes. Vairocana is associsated with delusion (moha), Askhobhya with pride (mana), Amithaba with envy (irsya), Ratnasambhava with hatred (dvesha), and Amoghasiddhi with desire (raga). According to Buddhist psychology, these afflictions obscure one’s essential nature, but through spiritual practice, they can be transformed into wisdom. Such crowns were worn by Buddhist priests during rituals in which they identified with the power and wisdom of the Buddhas. Cloth, paper, wood, and metal crown leaves and occasionally complete crowns survive from the Himalayas. A complete and very fine circa late fourteenth to early fifteenth century painted crown in now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as is a superb circa late eleventh-early twelfth century painted single crown leaf that also depicts Vairocana in the bodhyagri mudra.

This leaf may be ascribed a West Tibet provenance by virtue of similarities with carved wooden crown leaves that survive in that region. A crown leaf uncovered at Phiyang Dongkar resembles this example in style and composition, and in the uncarved red painted bottom edge, with holes through which each leaf once attached to the adjacent leaves. Giuseppe Tucci published several examples that he found in Spiti, Kunavar and Guge in the 1930s. Reference to carved wooden Tibetan book covers, which survive in relative abundance, allows a date of c. thirteenth century.

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