This Thursday is International Mountain Day, and we're doing a deep dive into this 19th-century sculpture of the Mountain God Kula Kari! A local protector god, Kula Kari occupies a mountain in Lhodrak, south of the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and near the border with Bhutan. Kula Kari is a god in Tibet’s indigenous Bon religion who was later absorbed into the Buddhist pantheon, and he is still revered in both traditions. He belongs to a group of local divinities and spirits that were subjugated by Buddhist teachers and bound to serve as protectors of the region’s new faith. Here he is dressed as a Tibetan warrior riding a shaggy yak. Yaks, native to the Himalayas and adjoining regions of Inner Asia, rarely find such prominence in Tibetan Buddhist art except for in the context of local protector gods. Additional tiny animals roam near the base of the mountain abode, here symbolize by a three-story temple with Chinese-style eaves that frames the god. Note the sculpture’s clever use of tea...