An outstanding Pair of gilt bronze figures of Guardians, Lokapala China, Tang Dynasty, 8th - 10th Century

possibly cast for a very large votive altar set, with long insertion tangs to the rockwork bases, each muscular figure depicted in dynamic opposing poses with the hips thrust to one side, the legs swathed in short skirts and the bare torso adorned with a jeweled pectoral, the face in ferocious expression surmounted by a short peaked cap with long scarves caught billowing out by the celestial winds, each figure raising a muscled arm aloft and the other arm grasping a long studded club symbolising ritual thunderbolts or vajra (stands)

Compare a series of four small lokapala figures originally intended as components of portable votive altar sets, illustrated by Matsubara Saburo, Chinese Buddhist Sculpture, Tokyo, 1966, pl.254 (a) - (d), where pl.254(b) appears to bear a similar long club-like vajra, a detail that appears to be particularly rare otherwise. Compare in particular a small gilt-bronze with long club-vajra, excavated from Xi'an, Hebei province, ibid., p.297, fig.264.

The present pair of figures appear to be particularly well cast, with a confident evocation of body weight and movement, and given their size, ought to have embellished a rather large altar set. The club- or mace-like form of the vajra, is derived from the earlier Indo-Gandharan depiction of the waisted short club held by Sakyamuni's constant companion, Vajrapani. Such a long club would probably also have been held by the larger lokapala figure in the Grenville Winthrop Collection, now in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, illustrated by Hugo Munsterberg, Chinese Buddhist Bronzes, Tokyo, 1967, pl.87.