Yama Dharmaraja and Yami

The central figure, Yama, is a dark-blue, bull-headed deity with wild hair and a crown of five skulls, wielding a bone-topped club in his raised right hand and a noose in his left. He is surrounded by a blazing orange and gold fire mandala. His consort, Yami, is a smaller blue female figure holding a skull cup to his mouth. Below them, a blue water buffalo stands over a prone human figure on a red cushion. The background is filled with swirling orange flames, dark clouds, and smaller secondary deities in the upper corners, all executed with fine mineral pigments on silk.

This iconography belongs to the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism, representing the wrathful manifestation of Manjushri (Yama Dharmaraja) who serves as a primary protector deity (dharmapala). His role is to guard the practitioners from spiritual obstacles and symbolize the finality of death in the cycle of samsara.