Mala Tara (Colombo National Museum)
The statue of Mala Tara (Sinhala: මාල තාරා) is a 10th-century silver alloyed sculpture of the goddess Tara discovered from Mannar in Sri Lanka. Presently, it is on the display at the National Museum of Colombo . Goddess Tara Tara is considered the most beloved goddess of the Mahayana Buddhist pantheon (Jayawardene, 2016). She started to appear in the society of Sri Lanka around the seventh or eighth century A.D. and was worshipped until the fifteenth century A.D. (Jayawardene, 2016). Evidence for Tara worship in Sri Lanka is found in the Mihintale Slab Inscriptions of Mahinda IV ( 956-972 A.D.) where she is referred to as goddess Mininal (Gunawardana, 2019; Jayawardene, 2016). The largest figure of Tara in the country is found in Buduruwagala (Gunawardana, 2019). The statue This statue of Tara was discovered near the lighthouse at Mannar in 1957 (Gunawardana, 2019; Wikramagamage, 1990). It is a solid-cast, silver alloyed statue of 5.4 cm tall (Gunawardana, 2019). The goddess is depicted here…
