Among female deities, surely few are more formidable than Simhavaktra, a gilded bronze representation of whom I recently encountered in Singapore’s Asian Civilisations Museum.
The name Simhavaktra means ‘lion-faced’ and this leonine-faced she-deity, so the information panel told me, “strides over seas of blood which represent the world caught in an endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth.” Important in Vajrayana Buddhism – the form of Tantric Buddhism that developed in India and elsewhere, most notably in Tibet – she’s a protector of Buddhists “in the higher realms”. And she’s a dakini, which in Tibetan means a ‘sky-walker’, “who guides followers along the right path to enlightenment.”
All very well and good, but it’s Simhavatra’s garments that make the biggest impression. She wears a cloak of flayed human skin, “symbolising the peeling away of surface appearances to reveal ultimate reality.” Look carefully at her statue in the Asian Civilisations Museum and you’ll see that the arms of that expanse of skin are knotted around her throat, with their hands hanging on either side like gruesome tassels. Check out her back and you’ll see the head of the poor bugger who donated this skin dangling from her nape, and at least one of his feet adorning the cloak’s bottom corner.
That skin cloak was presumably removed from its former owner by the tool Simhavaktra wields in her right hand, “a curved flaying knife with a vajira (thunderbolt) handle.”
Incidentally, I thought the Asian Civilisations Museum was one of the most attractive and interesting museums I’ve visited in a long while. Expect to hear more about it in future posts on this blog.