Old Tibetan Phurba for comment or information

[Captain D]

Originally Posted by Battara

Welcome Capt D,

Mongolian - hmmm.....if Central Asia I would have thought Bon religion and not Tibetan....if you have any pictures of non-Buddhist Mongolian phurbas that would be great.

Actually, Bon is the indigenous, pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet. Bon practitioners regard it as being a form of Buddhism that pre-dates Gautama Buddha by tens of millenia. It contains many elements of Central Asian shamanism, one of which is the ritual use of the phurba. I have never seen a Mongolian phurba, neither in person nor in a pic. My conjecture about the subject of this thread being Mongolian is just that: conjecture. However, given the reported extent of the phurba cult across Central Asia, from Delhi, India to Japan, it could be from many places. The key, I think, is in identifying the typology of the non-iconographic carving which covers this unusual piece. Ideally, identifying the wood would be helpful as well. The Mongols adopted Tibetan Buddhism as an official religion many centuries ago. Unfortunately, the Mongolians suffered the same cultural deprivation at the hands of the Chinese that the Tibetans did, and much of the cultural material related to their religious beliefs was destroyed, so I imagine Mongolian phurba, especially wooden ones, to be rare indeed.