Crown Top or Usnisha Cover

Maker: Unknown

late 9th–early 10th century

Indo-Pacific Art

This crown was intended to cover the topknot of a person or statue. The small curls evoke the story of snails crawling onto the Buddha’s head to protect him from the hot sun. The crystalline stone at the top of the crown represents the protuberance on the Buddha’s head, which is known as the “bump of wisdom” (usnisha, in Sanskrit). Small holes at the lower rim of the crown indicate that it was meant to be sewn or tied to some other object. Two similar crowns from the late ninth or early tenth century were found in Central Java in the 1990 discovery of the Wonoboyo Hoard, one of the greatest finds of Javanese gold to date.

Audio Guides

Ruth Barnes, Curator

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I am Ruth Barnes, the Thomas Jaffe Curator of Indo-Pacific Art here at the Yale University Art Gallery.

We are looking at a gold crown made in Java in the late ninth to early tenth century C.E. It was probably used as a crown to adorn a person, but it may also have been used to be fixed to a stone or wood sculpture. You see the tiny little holes at the rim of the crown that were probably to fasten the object to the top knot of either a person or the sculpture.

It certainly had a ceremonial function, so it would've been worn by the ruler or someone who represented the ruler in a particular possession, or if it were attached to a sculpture, it would've been a sculpture of the Buddha or Bodhisattva. We know that because of the tight little curls that are represented on the crown, which are believed to represent the snails that came to protect the Buddha from the hot sunshine while he was seated in meditation.

Gold was extremely valued in Java at the time. It was used to make jewelry and personal ornaments. It was also used for producing money. But Java itself actually has no gold, so it had to come from outside. It came from the islands of Sumatra and also from Borneo. But although Java itself does not have the metal—they had to bring that in from elsewhere—he goldsmith techniques that developed on the island are highly refined and enormously varied. Just about any technique that can be used in shaping gold was used in Java.

Medium

Repoussé gold sheet and gold wire, with crystal finial

Dimensions

crown: 5 11/16 × 3 7/8 in., 152 g (14.5 × 9.9 cm)
plume: 7 1/16 × 1 7/16 in., 3.64 g (18 × 3.6 cm)

Credit Line

Gift of Valerie and Hunter Thompson

Accession Number

2008.21.109a-b

Culture
Period

Early Classic period (ca. 650–1000)

Classification
Disclaimer

Note: This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the Yale University Art Gallery’s complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of records is ongoing.

Provenance

Provenance

The Hunter Thompson Collection of Ancient Javanese Gold, Toronto, to 2008; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn.
Bibliography
  • John Miksic, Old Javanese Gold: The Hunter Thompson Collection at the Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 2011), 141, fig. 22
Object copyright
Additional information

Object/Work type

ceremonial objects

Technical metadata and APIs

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