Yama and Chamundi

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According to the popular version of the mythological origins of Yama, a holy man was told that if he spent fifty years living in deep meditation in a cave, he would reach enlightenment. On the night of the twenty-ninth day of the eleventh month of the forty-ninth year, two robbers entered his cave with a stolen bull whose head they proceeded to cut off. When they realized that the hermit had witnessed their act, they decided to kill him. He begged them to spare his life, explaining that in a few minutes he would reach enlightenment and that all his efforts would be lost if they killed him before the expiration of the fifty years. The thieves ignored his request and cut off his head. Immediately, he assumed the ferocious form of Yama and put the bull's head on his own headless body. He then killed the two robbers and drank their blood from cups made from their skulls. In his fury, he threatened to destroy the entire population of Tibet. The Tibetan people appealed to the deity Manjushri (the Bodhisattva of wisdom), to protect them from Yama. Manjushri then assumed the form of Yamantaka (conqueror of death), defeated Yama, and turned him into a protector of Buddhism, in order to save the people.

With his dark-blue body lunging wildly across the back of his bull mount, Yama waves a bone-white skull-headed club and lasso. His consort is Chamundi, light blue in color, and who straddles the haunches of the bull and Yama's left leg. She offers Yama a skull bowl full of demon blood elixir. Both have three eyes and five-skull crowns; his is topped by a fierce vajra, symbolizing his having been tamed and bound to an oath of benevolent service by Manjushri in the form of Yamantaka. The vajra and his strong, short horns stand out against his solid mass of black- and gold-lined earth-colored hair wafting out behind him with strangely parallel regularity. Both are naked and the full glory of their nudity shines out in the entire composition. The bull copulates with the stricken body of ignorant life beneath his bellowing form.