Abundance

Purpose IV of nine

Support and sustenance

Yellow Jambhala sits with a mongoose in the left hand and a citron in the right, and the mongoose gives up its jewels only when it is pressed. The wealth deities are associated with prosperity that arrives through effort rather than through chance — and, in every text that describes them, with holding it lightly once it has.

The mongoose has to be pressed

Yellow Jambhala sits with a citron in the right hand and a mongoose in the left, and the detail that matters is that the mongoose gives up its jewels only when it is squeezed. The iconography is explicit about it. Wealth in this purpose is not luck arriving; it is what comes of pressure applied steadily to something that will yield.

And held lightly

Every text that describes these figures pairs the getting with the letting go. Jambhala is a protector before he is a wealth deity, and what he is understood to guard is the practice — the money is downstream of that, and the paintings are careful never to put it first. It is why he is seated on a lotus rather than on a hoard, and why the jewels are always falling out of the hand rather than piled in it.

Three from this purpose

黄财神 · JPTK-041 Thangka Painting Catalogue preview

扎基拉姆 · SP-055 Pendant Catalogue preview

作明佛母 · SP-066 Pendant Catalogue preview

View the collection

Where these go

The customary moment is an opening: a shop, a workshop, a first office. In Amdo they are hung facing the door rather than facing the room, so that whatever is carried in each morning passes under them. The small formats belong to the same custom — a new premises rarely has a wall to spare.

Customarily hung at the opening of a business, and given to people starting work of their own.

The figures · 4 figures

Yellow Jambhala黄财神

Yellow Jambhala, the wealth deity of earned prosperity

He is yellow-bodied and short-limbed, crowned and dressed in silks and jewellery. A mongoose rests in his left hand, disgorging jewels; his right hand holds a citron. He sits in a relaxed posture with the left leg drawn in and the right foot lowered onto a treasure vase or a small lotus.

One of the five Jambhalas, he is traditionally associated with prosperity that arrives through effort rather than chance. He is customarily given at the opening of a business, and to people starting work of their own.

See Yellow Jambhala pieces

Tsakli Lhamo扎基拉姆

Tsakli Lhamo, protector goddess of a Lhasa temple

She is a wrathful female protector, usually shown dark-bodied, with bared fangs, flame-red hair and the bone and skull ornaments of that class of figure. She is understood as a form of Palden Lhamo tied to one place, and depictions differ from temple to temple more than is usual.

She is the protector of Tsakli monastery in Lhasa, a temple known locally in connection with wealth and protection. Offerings of liquor are the custom there, and visitors bring them when asking her help in business.

See Tsakli Lhamo pieces

Kurukulla作明佛母

Kurukulla, red dakini of magnetising activity

She is red, youthful, with four arms, dancing on a corpse and a lotus with the left leg raised. Her upper hands draw a bow and arrow made of flowers; the lower two hold a hook and a noose, also flowered. She wears bone ornaments, a tiara of five skulls and a long garland of severed heads, with loose hair rising behind her.

In the tradition she is invoked for the activity of attraction and influence — one of the four enlightened activities — and her practice is customarily received from a teacher rather than taken up independently.

See Kurukulla pieces

Mani Jewel摩尼宝

The mani, the wish-fulfilling jewel of Buddhist art

The jewel is drawn as a rounded teardrop, usually red or gold, with a flame or a small halo of light at the tip. It appears singly, in a group of three stacked as a pyramid, or heaped in a bowl. Painters set it on a lotus, in the hand of a deity, or in the mouth of a snow lion.

It is one of the seven possessions of a universal monarch and appears among the offerings that accompany almost every deity. In the tradition it stands for the granting of wishes and for the worth of the teaching itself.

See Mani Jewel pieces

In the collection