Eastern India, Bihar, 9th century. Finely cast with Buddha seated in dhyanasana on a double-lotus base over a raised plinth, backed by a round nimbus with bead and flame border surmounted by a parasol, the stylized leaves of the Bodhi tree emerging from behind his head.Provenance: Dr. Phil Michael Henss, Zurich, Switzerland. A private collector, acquired from the above on 13 April 2018. A copy of the original invoice, dating the present lot to the 9th century and describing it as Buddha Ratnasambhava, accompanies this lot. Michael Henss is a Swiss art historian, scholar and writer focusing on Asian art - with a focus on Tibet and East Asia. He contributed articles for Asian art journals, seminars and books. Currently, Henss lives in Z??rich, Switzerland, where he also runs a bookstore specializing in Asia and the Near East. In 2004-2005 he was a co-curator of the exhibition "The Dalai Lamas" at the University of Z??rich Ethnography Museum.Condition: Very good condition with old wear, traces of use, minor nicks and dents here and there, light scratches, areas of fine copper-brown patina.Weight: 445.8 gDimensions: Height 15 cmDuring the Pala period, there was an increase of Buddhist patronage in Northeastern India, resulting in the production of a vast number of highly refined artworks that participated in the development of esoteric forms of Buddhism. Known as Vajrayana, the “diamond path,” this new iteration of Buddhism greatly expanded the pantheon of Buddhist deities. A large number of tantric texts were produced in Northeastern India and circulated throughout the Himalayas, where the esoteric knowledge they contained continued to flourish. Bronze sculptures played a crucial role in these lines of transmission. As portable objects, they could easily be carried across vast distances by the groups of monks and pilgrims who traveled by land and sea.Situated at the heart of Pala territory, less than twenty miles from Bodh Gaya and close to the renowned Buddhist monastery and educational establishment at Nalanda, Kurkihar became a sophisticated international center of artistic production at the end of the first millennium AD. Inscriptions found at Kurkihar document the arrival of monks and pilgrims from regions abroad, including distant places in India such as Kanchipuram in the South and also foreign lands such as maritime Southeast Asia. These visitors commissioned bronzes like the present example to donate to local temples and monasteries or to carry home.The bronzes produced by the expert artisans in Kurkihar contribute to the overarching Pala style while revealing their own local idiom particular to the Kurkihar workshops. Figures are characterized by slender proportions, delicately tapering torsos, and chests that swell with the intake of prana, the sacred life-breath. This present figure of Ratnasambhava, the “jewel-born” Buddha, is a seminal example of Kurkihar craftsmanship that gives expression to the donor's pious devotion.Literature comparison: Compare with two early to mid-9th century bronzes of Avalokiteshvara and Tara from Nalanda, published in Roy, Eastern Indian Bronzes, New Delhi, 1986, nos. 110a & 124.Auction result comparison: Compare with a related bronze, but with the Buddhist creed inscribed to the reverse, at Christie's New York in The Collection of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth Part I, on 17 March 2015, lot 12, sold for USD 269,000.