A four-armed image of Mahakala
By Debala Mitra
Summary
The author, Desala Mitra, presents a detailed description and analysis of a small, perfectly preserved, black basalt sculpture of the Buddhist deity Mahakala, which is currently exhibited as Bhairava in the Asutosh Museum of Indian Art at the University of Calcutta. This four-armed image is significant because of the extreme paucity of such Mahakala images in India, and the author suggests that some images currently identified as the Brahmanical god Bhairava may actually be Mahakala due to their analogous iconographical features. The sculpture is described as dwarfish with a protruding belly and three eyes, standing on a double-petalled lotus. The deity wears a short dhoti and a long scarf, is adorned with snake ornaments such as a necklace and a sacred thread, and wears a garland of skulls with five skulls on his flame-like hair. His face is distorted with an open mouth showing fangs. The two front hands carry the kapala and kartri, while the back hands hold a sword and a trisula, though the author notes this is a slight departure from the textual description in the Sivatattvaratnakara, which specifies a different order or set of attributes. The sculpture also features two dancing attendant goddesses on either side and a kneeling male devotee below. The back-slab has pointed top-centre and flame-like lines indicating a brilliantly blazing appearance. A dedicatory inscription in characters of the eleventh-twelfth century records the gift of the deity by Dinapati Netuka, the son of Sai(?) chi(?)cara. The sculpture forms part of the P. C. Mukherji collection and comes from eastern India, though its exact findspot is not recorded. The author references the Sidbanamala, volume eleven (Baroda, 1928), and the Sivatattvaratnakara as sources for the textual descriptions.
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Conclusion
This study of a four-armed basalt Mahakala sculpture from the P. C. Mukherji collection highlights the severe scarcity of such images in India and their frequent misidentification as the Brahmanical deity Bhairava due to shared iconographic traits. The figure’s physical characteristics, including its dwarf stature, three eyes, and serpent ornaments, closely align with textual descriptions found in the *Sadhanamala*. However, the sculpture presents a notable departure from these texts regarding the specific order of its four attributes—a sword and *khadg*—which diverges from the prescribed *karpala* and *kartari* of the two-armed form, as well as the alternative four-armed *Sadhanamala* descriptions. The presence of two dancing attendants and a kneeling devotee, alongside an eleventh-twelfth-century dedicatory inscription, underscores its regional significance and the active devotional practices surrounding the deity. Ultimately, this artifact illuminates the complex interplay of Buddhist and Brahmanical religious traditions in eastern India, suggesting that numerous sculptures currently labeled as Bhairava may, in fact, represent this rare and distinct Buddhist manifestation of Mahakala.