# @rubinmuseum on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DR2LwWsCejl
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/37560458-rubinmuseum-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/7e1302bd9a.jpg
- **Posted:** 2025-12-04T15:30:07.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art (@rubinmuseum) — https://gondola.cc/rubinmuseum

## Caption

In Lhasa people will be celebrating the Palden Lhamo Festival, a celebration to honor the female deity Palden Lhamo, who is a main protectress of the Dalai Lamas.

To celebrate the day in Jokhang, a frog-face Palden Lhamo statue is brought out to the temple courtyard and arranged to face a Shakyamuni Buddha statue. Extensive prayer rituals take place here. A group of special monks then carry the statue around Jokhang Temple, generating a large crowd of people who gather and make offerings.

In Lhasa the Palden Lhamo Festival is also celebrated as the “Women’s Festival.” On this day Tibetan women wear traditional clothes, transitioning to their winter dress, and go to Jokhang Temple to make offerings to the Palden Lhamo statue. Men give money to their wives, sisters, and other women in their lives as a token of friendship.

Peaceful and wrathful features are combined in this early representation of Palden Lhamo. While her facial expression is extremely wrathful, with fangs in her mouth, the deity wears a dhoti and jewelry. She has four arms and brandishes a sword and a tantric staff in her upper hands and a skull cup and a staff with a peacock feather in her lower ones. 

Palden Lhamo sits sideways on her mount, with her legs chained together. Her saddle is a human skin. She likely represents a form of the “smoke-clad” goddess Dusolma, although she does not possess all of the characteristics found in textual descriptions of that goddess.
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Pelden Lhamo Dusolma “Smoke-Clad Goddess”; Tibet; 14th century; pigments on cloth; Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art; C2001.3.1 (HAR 65007).

#RubinMuseum #RubinGlobal #HimalayanArt

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rubinmuseum, rubinglobal, himalayanart

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