11th Sep, 2025 11:00
The Collection of Sam and Myrna Myers Part 1
45
A GILT-BRONZE KILA, DALI KINGDOM, 12TH CENTURY
This lot is from a single owner collection and is therefore offered without reserve
€5,000
€10,000
€2,600 (1bid)
A buyer’s premium of 30.00% (including VAT) applies to the hammer price of this lot if your bid is successful.
China, Yunnan Province. The ritual dagger in the form of the three-headed Vidyaraja with his arms held to his chest in vairocana mudra, his resplendent wings and tail to the back, crowned with a tall mukta with a four-pronged vajra finial, and terminating in a tripartite blade issuing from a lotus-petal pedestal.
The back is cast with a ring-loop attachment in the form of a coiled snake.
Provenance: The Collection of Sam and Myrna Myers, Paris, France. Acquired between circa 1965-2012.
Condition: Good condition with expected wear, casting irregularities, signs of weathering, encrustations, corrosion, rubbing, minuscule losses, expected flaking and losses to gilt, the ring-loop with one crack. The green-tinted bronze with a rich, naturally grown, dark patina.
Weight: 119 g
Dimensions: Height 11.2 cm
The Dali Kingdom’s ritual daggers—known in Sanskrit as kīla and in Tibetan as phurba—represent some of the earliest surviving examples of these significant tantric implements, predating most Himalayan counterparts and offering critical insight into Buddhist material culture along the Southern Silk Road. The Dali kingdom ruled a large swath of territory in what is now southwest China, centered in present-day Yunnan Province.
Dali’s daggers display considerable continuities with their more widespread Himalayan counterparts, but they differ in one key way: all Dali daggers are attached to rings, meaning that they could be slipped on a finger or looped on a cord. In addition, most Dali daggers feature the top half of a deity above and a blade below, which is less common in early Himalayan phurba.
Because the Dali texts—written in Sinitic script and drawing on Tang-Song sources—refer to instruments called ‘vajra stakes’ (jingang jue) rather than phurba, scholars infer that the physical daggers arrived via transregional exchanges from Pala India and Southeast Asia, then adapted within the Dali court’s Buddhist tradition, which blended Indic and Chinese cosmologies. The Dali kingdom bordered Song China, Dai Viet, Bagan, and Khams, with Pala territory just beyond Bagan, so different forms of Buddhism could have entered Dali from different directions. As ritual objects, these daggers may have served more devotional or protective roles than the actively manipulated phurba of Tibetan ceremonial practice.
The Dali daggers show many similarities with their Himalayan counterparts: they are bifurcated into a bottom half that consists of a three-faceted blade, and a top half that displays the torso and head of a deity as well as lotus and vajra decorations. They use similar, if not identical, materials: most Dali daggers are made of gilt bronze or copper, but there is at least one example made of iron; most Himalayan phurba are made of iron or wood, but there are also examples made of bronze, copper, steel, or other metal alloys. For further discussion, see Megan Bryson, “Dali Daggers: Buddhist Material Culture on the Southern Silk Road”, in Saved from Desert Sands. Re-discovering Objects on the Silk Roads, East and West, vol. 18, 2024, pp. 162-193.
Literature comparison:
Compare a related Dali bronze kila with a single-faced bodhisattva, also wearing a double vajra crown and holding the hands in the vairocana mudra, excavated from the pagoda of Chongsheng Temple in Yunnan, currently in the collection of the Yunnan Provincial Museum, illustrated in Li Kunsheng, The Complete Works of Yunnan National Fine Arts: The Sculpture and Painting Arts of Nanzhao and Dali Kingdoms, Kunming, 1999, no. 298.
Auction result comparison:
Type: Closely related
Auction: Christie’s Hong Kong, 29 May 2019, lot 2711
Price: HKD 1,062,500 or approx. EUR 129,000 converted and adjusted for inflation at the time of writing
Description: A gilt-bronze kila, Dali Kingdom, 12th century
Expert remark: Compare the closely related form, manner of casting, gilding, subject, and size (11.1 cm). Note that this example also has it’s back cast with a ring-loop attachment in the form of a coiled snake.
China, Yunnan Province. The ritual dagger in the form of the three-headed Vidyaraja with his arms held to his chest in vairocana mudra, his resplendent wings and tail to the back, crowned with a tall mukta with a four-pronged vajra finial, and terminating in a tripartite blade issuing from a lotus-petal pedestal.
The back is cast with a ring-loop attachment in the form of a coiled snake.
Provenance: The Collection of Sam and Myrna Myers, Paris, France. Acquired between circa 1965-2012.
Condition: Good condition with expected wear, casting irregularities, signs of weathering, encrustations, corrosion, rubbing, minuscule losses, expected flaking and losses to gilt, the ring-loop with one crack. The green-tinted bronze with a rich, naturally grown, dark patina.
Weight: 119 g
Dimensions: Height 11.2 cm
The Dali Kingdom’s ritual daggers—known in Sanskrit as kīla and in Tibetan as phurba—represent some of the earliest surviving examples of these significant tantric implements, predating most Himalayan counterparts and offering critical insight into Buddhist material culture along the Southern Silk Road. The Dali kingdom ruled a large swath of territory in what is now southwest China, centered in present-day Yunnan Province.
Dali’s daggers display considerable continuities with their more widespread Himalayan counterparts, but they differ in one key way: all Dali daggers are attached to rings, meaning that they could be slipped on a finger or looped on a cord. In addition, most Dali daggers feature the top half of a deity above and a blade below, which is less common in early Himalayan phurba.
Because the Dali texts—written in Sinitic script and drawing on Tang-Song sources—refer to instruments called ‘vajra stakes’ (jingang jue) rather than phurba, scholars infer that the physical daggers arrived via transregional exchanges from Pala India and Southeast Asia, then adapted within the Dali court’s Buddhist tradition, which blended Indic and Chinese cosmologies. The Dali kingdom bordered Song China, Dai Viet, Bagan, and Khams, with Pala territory just beyond Bagan, so different forms of Buddhism could have entered Dali from different directions. As ritual objects, these daggers may have served more devotional or protective roles than the actively manipulated phurba of Tibetan ceremonial practice.
The Dali daggers show many similarities with their Himalayan counterparts: they are bifurcated into a bottom half that consists of a three-faceted blade, and a top half that displays the torso and head of a deity as well as lotus and vajra decorations. They use similar, if not identical, materials: most Dali daggers are made of gilt bronze or copper, but there is at least one example made of iron; most Himalayan phurba are made of iron or wood, but there are also examples made of bronze, copper, steel, or other metal alloys. For further discussion, see Megan Bryson, “Dali Daggers: Buddhist Material Culture on the Southern Silk Road”, in Saved from Desert Sands. Re-discovering Objects on the Silk Roads, East and West, vol. 18, 2024, pp. 162-193.
Literature comparison:
Compare a related Dali bronze kila with a single-faced bodhisattva, also wearing a double vajra crown and holding the hands in the vairocana mudra, excavated from the pagoda of Chongsheng Temple in Yunnan, currently in the collection of the Yunnan Provincial Museum, illustrated in Li Kunsheng, The Complete Works of Yunnan National Fine Arts: The Sculpture and Painting Arts of Nanzhao and Dali Kingdoms, Kunming, 1999, no. 298.
Auction result comparison:
Type: Closely related
Auction: Christie’s Hong Kong, 29 May 2019, lot 2711
Price: HKD 1,062,500 or approx. EUR 129,000 converted and adjusted for inflation at the time of writing
Description: A gilt-bronze kila, Dali Kingdom, 12th century
Expert remark: Compare the closely related form, manner of casting, gilding, subject, and size (11.1 cm). Note that this example also has it’s back cast with a ring-loop attachment in the form of a coiled snake.
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Auction: The Collection of Sam and Myrna Myers Part 1, 11th Sep, 2025
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