# Water Buffalo and Herdboys

- Date: late 1200s–early 1300s
- Medium: Hanging scroll; ink on silk
- Classification: Painting
- Dimensions: Painting: 23.7 x 50.5 cm (9 5/16 x 19 7/8 in.); Overall with knobs: 109 x 67.6 cm (42 15/16 x 26 5/8 in.)
- Culture: China, Yuan dynasty (1271-1368)
- Credit line: Gift of Herbert F. Leisy in memory of his wife, Helen Stamp Leisy
- Museum: [Cleveland Museum of Art](https://clevelandart.org/art/1977.200)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/cma/1977.200/1977.200_web.jpg
- Who can see it: Teens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

In southern China, farmers use water buffalos to help plow their fields, which children often tend. In Buddhist teachings, the subject of herding or taming an ox was used to illustrate the 10 steps to enlightenment, or spiritual awakening. A single image may be read as a metaphorical representation of the Chan process of attaining enlightenment, the difficulty of which was likened to that of finding a strayed buffalo. Here, a buffalo is watered by a boy, another takes a bath in the pond. Chan paintings introduced to Japan were often remounted to fit them into niches for display (tokonoma), which explains the painting’s current format.