A copper-alloy Kila, Tibet, 12th century | 十二世紀 藏傳銅合金金剛橛

Collection of Mimi Lipton, acquired in the 1980s.

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Mimi Lipton收藏，得於1980年代初

The upper part of the ritual dagger is in the form a wrathful deity adorned with naga serpent jewellery and his right hand is raised holding a vajra, with the three-sided blade emerging from the jaws of a makara. The purba is standing in a later triangular iron receptacle with silvered skull and flame motifs and has a consecration sealing plate in the middle of its back.

Compare a circa twelfth century Tibetan copper alloy purba in the Norbulingka Collection, Lhasa, where the two-armed snake-adorned deity holds a kapala and karttrka, see Ulrich von Schroeder, Buddhist Sculptures in Tibet, 2001, Vol. II, p. 1196, pl. 325A; and a circa twelfth century Tibetan example with a gilt copper alloy torso in the form of a two-armed deity adorned with snakes and a separate iron blade, see Pratapaditya Pal, Tibet: Tradition and Change, Albuquerque, 1998, pp 162-63, pl. 81. Similar purba compositions were evidently popular in Dali Kingdom Buddhist ritual during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, see Robert Bigler, Art and Faith at the Crossroads, Zurich, 2013, cat. no. 3, and Albert Lutz, Der Goldschatz der Drei Pagoden, Zurich, 1991, cat. no 80.