A rare gilt bronze figure of Trailokyavijaya China, Tang Dynasty

dressed in dhoti and tiger-skin apron, striding purposefully in pratyalidhasana upon two prostrate figures on rockwork, the deity's eight arms arrayed with the main hands in vajrahumkara  mudra and the remainder raising aloft a vajra and other weapons, now missing, the main head with wrathful expression framed by three other heads and a crown set with skulls and a Buddha

During the eighth and first half of the ninth centuries, Esoteric Buddhism, introduced through texts from India, received strong patronage from the Tang Dynasty court. Trailokyavijaya, 'The Conqueror of the Three Worlds', an emanation of Vajrapani, implies the authority over heaven, earth and the underworld, or alternatively the subjugation of all states of existence, classified as 'the World of Desire', 'the World of Form' and 'the World of the Formless'.

The iconography of this deity as having four heads and eight arms, trampling Mahesvara, the King of Lust, and his consort Uma, under his left and right feet respectively, appears in texts ascribed to the monk Yixing (683-727), and was certainly known by at least the early eighth century. As such, the present gilt bronze appears to be among the earliest Chinese representations of the subject. See the discussion by Rob Linrothe, Ruthless Compassion. Wrathful Deities in Early Indo-Tibetan Esoteric Buddhist Art, Boston, 1999, pp.188-189, and compare the famous tenth century stone image in Bodhgaya, Bihar, illustrated ibid., pls.162-164.