Bodhidharma

Unkoku Tōgan

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This imagined portrait depicts Bodhidharma, the monk credited with transmitting Zen Buddhism from India to China in the sixth century. The image is inscribed with a poem in Chinese by Gyokuho Jōsō (1546–1613), the 130th abbot of Daitokuji, a major Zen monastery in Kyoto. To accommodate the figure, who faces left, the text is read from left to right; this is atypical for Japanese and Chinese writing but common in devotional paintings, where the direction of the text often responds to the orientation of the figure. The poem celebrates Bodhidharma’s early efforts to spread Zen in China: Speeding past Liang and Wei, He cut his trip short. And why did he do so? He held back, for the sake of the unenlightened. —Translated by Aaron Rio

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