Portable Buddhist Shrine

Description Pilgrims and itinerant monks used portable shrines for worship and teaching. In the central panel, the historical Buddha Shakyamuni (Siddhartha Gautama, ca. 563–483 BCE) preaches a sermon while surrounded by disciples, donors, and guardian deities. Above, a celestial Buddha from the distant past listens to the sermon from a three-storied pagoda. At the bottom, four musicians flank a stupa, a sacred mound or architectural structure that safeguards a relic of the Buddha or another venerated being. On the left and right doors, the bodhisattvas Manjushri and Samantabhadra are on their animal mounts. Below them are the 16 disciples of Buddha Sakyamuni, referred to as "arhats" in Sanskrit and "lohans" in Chinese.

Exhibitions

• Pilgrimage and Buddhist Art. Asia Society, New York. 2010.

Provenance Yamanaka & Co., New York; purchased by Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1920; by bequest to Walters Art Museum, 1931.

Inscriptions [Sticker] Y B 1980 (Yamanaka & Co.)

Credit Acquired by Henry Walters, 1920