Medicine Master Buddha and the Twelve Divine Generals
1200s
- Medium
- Hanging scroll painting; ink, color, gold, and silver on silk
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Image: 151.2 x 84.1 cm (59 1/2 x 33 1/8 in.); Overall: 261 x 106.6 cm (102 3/4 x 41 15/16 in.); with knobs: 261 x 113.3 cm (102 3/4 x 44 5/8 in.)
- Culture
- Japan, Kamakura period (1185–1333)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Japanese Art
- Credit line
- Edward L. Whittemore Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
From the 700s, people in Japan began praying to the Medicine Master Buddha (Yakushi Nyorai) for longevity. Yakushi is at the center of this image, flanked by the bodhisattvas of the sun and moon, Nikkō and Gakkō. The Twelve Divine Generals, a group of protective deities, surround him. Yakushi sits in a meditative pose with his right hand in a gesture bestowing fearlessness while his left hand holds a medicine jar. In the upper part of the painting, rectangles simulating decorative paper inscription slips contain excerpts from a sacred text about Yakushi, in which he asks that sick people who speak his name should become well and that all who hear his name might have their purity restored.
