An Extremely rare gilt-bronze figure of seven-headed Marici Ming Dynasty, 15th / 16th century

the goddess seated in dhyanasana, her two main arms held at chest-level in mantangi mudra, the attendant six arms held in various mudras radiating out from her body, her round benevolent face with heavy eyelids and an urna on the forehead framed by thick black curls on the head and long pendulous ear lobes, the subsidiary heads at the rear in a stylized boar and two ferocious aspects, the fourth head of Sakyamuni Buddha prodruding from the top of her head, dressed in a dhoti tied at the waist with floral hems exposing her bejeweled chest, the shoulders draped with a floral mantle and a flowing sash draped around the shoulders and arms

Marici or Vajravarahi is known as the Goddess of the Dawn or Queen of the Heavens.  She represents compassion and the vanquishing of evil.  As Vajravarahi, she is believed to be the incarnate of every successive abbess of the monestary of Semding.  Legend has it that one of these abbess had a growth behind her ear which resembled a sow's head.  When the Mongol warrior, Dzungar came to attack the monastery, he called out for her the abbess to come out to show her sow's head.  When he and his army destroyed the walls of the monastery, all they found were a group of sows and pigs inside led by a sow larger than the rest of the group.  Dzungar was so amazed that he stopped the pillage, at which the sows and pigs transformed into monks and nuns; the largest sow transformed into the abbess.  Dzungar was so amazed at the miracle that he converted and enriched the monastery. 

It is extremely rare to find Marici with the fourth head of Buddha.  Most often she has a "yellow" incarnation with three heads and eight or sixteen arms.  In her "red" form she has three heads and ten arms. In her "white" form she has ten arms and four legs treading on Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. 

Compare a Marici seated on a sow sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 20th November 1985, lot 237 and a figure standing on a plinth being drawn by seven pigs, sold in these rooms, 2nd December 1974, lot 55.  An earlier 13th / 14th century Nepalese stele with Marici in her pig-drawn vehicle being protected by her boar-headed warriors, is illustrated in Buddhist Art from Rehol, Chang Foundation, Taiwan, 1999, cat.no. 23.