Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Fudo Myo 'o, with attendants Kongara and Seitaka
14th-15th century
- Medium
- Color and gold on silk
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- H x W: 101.3 x 51.1 cm (39 7/8 x 20 1/8 in)
- Culture
- Buddhists
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Asian Art
- Credit line
- Gift of Charles Lang Freer
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
The Buddhist deity Fudo Myo'o stands atop a rocky ledge, attended by two young boys, Kongara and Seitaka, who stand together at right. Fudo Myo'o is surrounded by flames, which represent light and the deity's fierce determination to protect Buddhism against all enemies. He holds his sword and rope to strike down and bind the enemies of Buddhism. To the left of the rock is a sword entwined by a dragon surrounded by flames, clouds, and thunderbolts. The dragon is associated throughout East Asia with thunder, rain, and water, but in this form, encircling a sword and surrounded by flames, it symbolizes Fudo Myo'o.
