Tibetan Phurbas with Stand

Tibetan phurbas are ritual daggers, though the name gives a truer sense of their purpose than the translation does: the Sanskrit kīla means a peg, a nail, a stake driven into the ground. A phurba is not a weapon for cutting but an implement for pinning — used in Vajrayana practice to transfix obstructing forces and hold them immobile so they can be transformed rather than merely driven off. Each of our Tibetan phurbas is handcrafted in Patan, Nepal, by skilled artisans using traditional methods, and supplied with its own stand so it can be kept upright on the altar between sessions.

The form carries meaning at every level. The handle represents wisdom and the lower part of the blade represents method, so that holding the phurba is itself a statement about the inseparability of the two. The blade is three-sided rather than flat — a shape that cannot cut cleanly but can pierce and hold — and its three faces are read variously as the three poisons of greed, hatred and delusion; the three times of past, present and future; and the three spirit worlds. The phurba entire stands as the world axis, the pillar running through those three worlds and binding them together.

The implement has its own deity. Vajrakilaya — Dorje Phurba in Tibetan, literally “vajra phurba” — is the wrathful deity who is the phurba, and his practice is among the most important in the Nyingma school, transmitted by Guru Rinpoche himself. Handles are worked accordingly: one of our Tibetan phurbas carries the head of Hayagriva, the horse-headed wrathful protector, at its pommel.

Our Tibetan phurbas run from 9.25 inches — a size suited to a personal shrine or a practitioner’s kit — up to a 16.5 inch ritual dagger set finished in antiquated copper and carved in exceptionally fine detail, the kind of piece intended as the centrepiece of a shrine room rather than as working equipment. The smaller sets are gold plated. Every one is engraved by hand, so no two carry identical work. Browse the selection below, or see our full range of Tibetan ritual items.