Artworks

Thousand-armed Kannon, Tōshōdaiji

Artwork · Anonymous · second half of the 8th century · statue · Tōshōdai-ji Temple

An eleven-headed, thousand-armed Kannon beside the Birushana in the golden hall of Tōshōdaiji — the only such image in Japan that really had a thousand arms, 953 of them left: six large, thirty-four smaller with attributes, the rest tiny hands forming a second halo. Made in wood-core dry lacquer. 1 Mason 2005, p. 96, fig. 122. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.