The Buddhist adept Indrabhuti

Indrabhuti was the first Himalayan monarch to receive Buddhist teachings: they fell from the sky onto the roof of his palace. By decoding them, he became the first practitioner of Mahayoga, the meditative technique wherein one creates an imaginative visualization (kyerim) of a symbolically charged divine image. Legend identifies Indrabhuti as monarch of Zahor, a mysterious region probably near the Swat Valley in Kashmir. Itself often understood as another magical Vajrayana kingdom, the Swat Valley has been identified with Oddiyana and its most famous son, Padmasambhava.

This recent sculpture presents the enigmatic monarch with a crown of five skulls, each of which represents one of five buddhas of the cardinal directions. He sits on a platform that may represent the sacred scriptures that fell from the sky onto his palace. Such celestial reception of Tantric revelation is a recurring theme in Tibetan thought; the extent to which such accounts are literal remains a bone of contention.