Chest with Tantric Offering Scenes
The imagery on this chest suggests that it served as an altar placed before a wrathful deity such as Mahakala in a protective shrine (gonkhang). Ceremonial utensils would have been stored inside it and arranged on the lid during ritual enactment. Set within a sea of blood, the scene on the chest features demons bearing gory offerings and others dismembering the dead with flaying knives, while dogs and vultures tear at the corpses. Attended by a tiger, a camel, elephants, and mules, the demons approach the central offering: a large decaying head. The head supports objects related to the five senses (equated with the five desires)—eyes for sight, a damaru drum for sound, a nose for smell, a tongue for taste, and a heart for touch.
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