Mahasthamaprapta Bodhisattva

Unidentified artist

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

About 1900 the French Sinologist Paul Pelliot acquired a large group of paintings in Beijing that had come from a Qing imperial repository. Included in that group was a partial set of paintings that were created for the Water-Land ritual, a Buddhist mortuary ceremony conducted for the salvation of all the souls of the dead, whether on land or at sea. This painting may have come from the same set. A cartouche in the upper right corner of the composition identifies the deity portrayed here as Mahasthamaprapta (Dashizhi, in Chinese), a bodhisattva or enlightened being whose name means "one who has attained great power." Seated on a strikingly realistic lion mount and accompanied by a female attendant bearing a pearl, the bodhisattva holds the stem of a lotus with two blossoms that appear above his shoulders, one supporting a pearl, the other a thunderbolt-like implement (vajra). His right hand forms the mudra for charity. Most likely, this painting would have been displayed as part of a triptych together with an image of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara (Guanyin) and a central image of the Amitabha (Miluo) Buddha.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.

Metropolitan Museum of Art