This pentaptych diadem with the Five Jina Buddhas would have been worn by a Nepalese Buddhist priest known as the Vajracharya (Master of the Thunderbolt) during public ceremonies to identify him or her ritually as the primordial teacher Vajrasattva (Adamantine Being).
By donning the headdress over an artificial mound of the triple-crowned Mount Meru hair, generally made of thick, black string, the teacher or practitioner becomes the purified Vajrasattva, the Adamantine Being, and is thereby theologically qualified to perform the rituals. This public display of presumed spiritual attainment documents that the esoteric practices of one’s transformation into a Vajrayana deity had become common knowledge. This is thought to have occurred by the 6th–7th century in India, although sculpted representations date back only to the 11th–12th century in eastern India as Tantric methodologies shifted towards a public ministry. See John C. Huntington and Dina Bangdel, The Circle of Bliss: Buddhist Meditational Art (Columbus: Columbus Museum of Art and Chicago: Serindia Publications, 2003), pp. 224-229, nos. 60-62.
The Five Jina Buddhas, from the viewer’s left, are Amitabha (Infinite Light), Vairochana (Intensely Luminescent One), Akshobhya (Unshakeable One), Ratnasambhava (Jewel Born), and Amoghasiddhi (Unfailing Success). These five Buddhas, who are emanations of Adi Buddha (Primordial Enlightened One), represent the state and qualities of Buddhahood and the essence of the Buddhist Dharma. Each Buddha has a specific mudra, insight, symbol, color, vehicle, and rules a cardinal direction or the zenith. The Buddhas' female aspects (prajna) are present in this ritual headdress only by implication, as some crowns portray the Five Jina Buddhas in union with their Buddha Prajnas. Each Buddha represented here has a flaming aureola (prabhavali). They each sit on a double lotus base in a gemstone-bordered cartouche in the center of an outer border of scrolling vines made of openwork silver. Beneath each Buddha is a mask of a mythical animal, the zipac, which is a Tibetan apotropaic symbol resembling the Indian "Face of Glory" (kirttimukha) and the Chinese gluttonous creature (taotie).
See also M.79.151.1, M.79.151.2, and M.81.67. A comparable ritual diadem is in the Field Museum, Chicago (1965.2855.235030). For the initiation cards (tsakali) with images of the deities to be envisioned by the practitioner during the public ceremonies, see M.74.139.8, M.88.59.1-.4, and AC1998.253.1-.6.
