Offering Table

Offering tables (Tibetan: chog tri) are typically longer than tables made for other uses and can be quite low. Usually they have solid and decorated sides. This example is lavishly decorated with repoussé silver over wood. Typically such tables would be used for placing butter lamps, offering bowls, and other offerings and would be decorated with images appropriate for this purpose. Auspicious symbols, the four auspicious animals—garuda, tiger, dragon, and snow lion (symbolic representatives of the directions)—and images of offerings are typical for the elaborate decoration of such tables. The surface of this example shows a lama, or ritual master, presenting a symbolic offering of the universe in the form of a mandala. Its front features eight offering goddesses with the seven symbols of a universal ruler (Sanskrit: chakravartin) depicted in the register above. The side panels of this upper register depict the eight kinds of offerings, four on each side, and the panels below them show the Eight Auspicious Symbols, again divided between the two sides with four on each panel.