Mahakala has many forms and diverse functions, which are dictated by the needs and abilities of devotees. To initiated practitioners he appears in esoteric, wrathful forms. To lay devotees, he takes more human forms as portrayed in the present lot. Two handed depictions of Mahakala often depict the deity holding the skull cup and either a cutter or a sword. In the case of the present lot, the missing attribute is likely a cutter, due to the angle that the hand is held.

The Qianlong emperor was a devoted Buddhist and a keen follower of Tibetan Lamaist teachings. He had bronze figures of the Tibetan Buddhist Pantheon made in the Palace Workshop to be enshrined in the numerous Buddhist halls built within the Forbidden City, such as the Baoxianglou and the Fanhualou.

The figures enshrined in the Fanhualou were divided into six categories, and the inscription on the back of the present lot reading wushang yinti genben (the root of the supreme yin manifestation), indicates that it belongs to the third category and was enshrined in the third chamber of the Fanhualou, built by Qianlong in 1772. It is recorded that 786 images were enshrined there.

Related figures from the Fanhualou with similar Qianlong marks and identifying inscriptions are illustrated in Fanhualou / Statues in the Sanctuary of Buddhist Essence, Beijing, 2013, Vol. I, nos. 330-332, and Vol. II, figs., 738-741. Related figures from the Baoxianglou are illustrated by Walter Eugene Clark, Two Lamaistic Pantheons, New York, reprinted 1965. Other related figures have sold at Christie's New York, 22nd March 2007, lot 215; 15th September 2011, lot 1376; and in our London rooms, 4th November 2009, lot 215.