October
19
/ 2013
The word Kapala is a Sanskirt term meaning skull, bowl, vessel, begging bowl and is a decorative human skull used as a ritual implement in both Hindu and Buddhist Tantra. They were often carved with decorative designs or elaborately mounted with precious metals and jewels. There are two main types of kapalas – those that use a full skull, and those that only use the skull cap or top-half of the cranium. The kapalas were usually made from skulls collected at sky burial sites, an ancient Tibetan burial custom, still practiced today, in which the bodies of the dead are dismembered and scattered over open ground to ‘give alms to the birds’. It is a ritual that has a great
