Vajrakila (Adamantine Stake), also known as Vajrakumara (Adamantine Youth), is the deification and embodiment of Tibetan ritual daggers (phurpa). Accordingly, in Tibetan he is called Dorje Phurpa. During the period of the Brahmanas (a body of Indian ritual literature dating from 1200-800 BCE), the priests used kilas (pegs) to cast out obstructions (mara). By the 7th-8th century, an array of Buddhist techniques of benefaction including the personification of the kila, Vajrakumara, had been incorporated into Tantric doctrine and practice. In the meditational context, kilas as triangular pegs are used to secure sacred space from the influences of negative influences and local spirits.
Vajrakila is depicted here with three wrathful faces, six arms, and four legs. He stands on the recumbent Shaiva Rudras, Ishvara and Uma, who symbolize delusion and ego. Stretched over his back are the flayed skins of an elephant and human, and he wears a tiger skin around his waist. These three skins symbolize Vajrakila’s overcoming of ignorance, desire, and anger—the three poisons of attainment. He also wears a long garland of severed skulls (mundamala) and serpents for ornaments. He has a diminutive wrathful figure surmounting each of his three faces, one on the back of his front face, and one supported by serpents on his chignon. Vajrakila stands in a militant posture (alidha asana) with his right leg bent and his left leg extended. With his two principal hands he rolls a phurpa between his palms in a traditional method used to cast a curse upon an enemy. In his upper right hand, he holds a nine-pronged thunderbolt (vajra), while in his lower right hand he holds a five-pronged thunderbolt. The attributes in his analogous left hands are now lost but were likely a blazing mass of fire and a ritual staff (khatvanga). Holes in the backs of two arms were used to attach now-missing wings indicative of his heruka (wrathful compassion) nature in the Nyingma iconographic tradition.
See Himalayan Art Resources, no. 85706, https://www.himalayanart.org/items/85706
