White Tara (Tibetan Buddhist Deity)

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This copper-cast, plated with pure silver and adorned with coral beads and other semi-precious stone-beads, represents goddess Tara, the supreme female deity in Buddhism sometimes considered as powerful as, or even more powerful than the Buddha himself. Tara is believed to be one ‘whose smile made the sun to shine and frown made darkness to envelop the terrestrial sphere’. Texts acclaim Tara as Prajnaparmita – Perfection of Wisdom and Embodiment of the highest metaphysical principle, having priority over Buddha. Tara is venerated as the light and the prime source of Buddhahood and thus of Buddhas. In Mahayana Buddhism Tara is contended to be the mother of all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. As in Brahmanical line all goddesses look like Devi’s forms, in Buddhist line all female deities look like Tara’s ‘Bhedas’ - forms. Unlike many local or regional female deities that Tibetan people worship or worshipped Tara is the universal deity of Buddhism. As her name suggests, Tara is one who helps wade across the impassable ocean, whether that of the life, or the sailors’. Tara is always benevolent, compassionate, gentle, playful, young, lustrous and protective.

The cult of Tara in Buddhism seems to emerge during early centuries of the Common Era, which it might have adopted from aboriginal tribes. Being more impressive or effective and popular it might have absorbed other similarly prevalent cults and emerged as the mightiest. As perceive the Buddhist texts and the popular tradition, Tara had many versions, five of them identified as well distinct forms : ‘Sit’ or White Tara, Shyama or Green Tara, Bhrakuti or Yellow Tara, Ekajata or Blue Tara, and Kukukulla or Red Tara. These forms of Tara are further diversified; White Tara’s being seven diverse forms. Taras’ names are suggestive of their body-colours and thereby elements of the cosmos which such colours represented and these forms of Tara personified and believed to command. Obviously, this silver plated image, suggestive of the white body-colour, represents White Tara. Contended to emerge from the eye of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara – his Compassion separated, White Tara is often seen as the Bodhisattva of Compassion. She is broadly the great Saviour, helper of every soul in torment and the kinetic power of compassion.

This image represents Vajrasana White Tara, Tara’s foremost form that represents Prajnaparmita. As is the conventional iconography of Vajrasana White Tara, this image is normal two-armed but the artist has manipulated to attribute them dual role. As prescribed the left hand has to hold a lotus, and the right, to be held in ‘varada-mudra’ – the boon-giving posture. In some texts the left hand is held in ‘vitarka-mudra’ – interpretive posture. This image holds lotuses in both hands, though simultaneously the right is also in ‘abhaya-mudra’, and left, also in ‘vitarka-mudra’. Contended to be the Shakti of Amoghasiddha whose primary attribute is lotus, the artist has conceived her form with lotuses in both hands. As prescribed, the lotuses have supporting on their upper edges the motifs of Vajra – thunderbolt, which define her form as Vajrasana White Tara.

As the related texts have it, this statue represents her as the timeless youth of sixteen, lustrous and tender as moon, and as adorned in white and brilliant jewels. Elegantly modeled with an angular face – broader forehead with a receding narrow chin, tilted a little to right, neck with three folds, broad shoulders, well defined breasts, subdued belly, broader hips, tall arms, delicate long fingers and tender feet, this ‘Padmasana’ image of the goddess, rendered pursuing Nepali metal-cast idiom as it matured at Tibet using early Kashmiri art elements, reveals rare aesthetic beauty. Besides a sharp nose, small cute lips, half-shut large lotus eyes with arched eyebrows, broad forehead and waving hair, not fully covered by her crown, there enshrine on her face celestial charm, great quiescence and divine lustre. The image has been installed on a high pedestal, broad on foreside and narrower on the back lest its outreaching corners diverted eye from the image, and the elegantly designed ‘Prabhavali’ – fire-arch, looked like a part of this flat platform. Her beautifully folded ‘antariya’ – lower wear, spread over her legs and down on the sea, sash lying on her arms and her crown with five jewels, perhaps symbolic of Five Buddhas, along with other ornaments – a few but elegantly conceived, are exceptionally beautiful.

This description by Prof. P.C. Jain and Dr. Daljeet. Prof. Jain specializes on the aesthetics of literature and is the author of numerous books on Indian art and culture. Dr. Daljeet is the curator of the Miniature Painting Gallery, National Museum, New Delhi. They have both collaborated together on a number of books.