Mogao Cave 159: Illustration of the Vimalakirti Sutra - Chapter on the Disciples

CHINA, Gansu, Dunhuang; Tang dynasty

This detail is located in the lower register of the mural on the right side of the front (east) wall within the main chamber. Three vertical panels depict the scene in which the Buddha asks his disciples, including Maudgalyayana, Subhuti, Purna, Katyayana, Aniruddha, Upali, Rahula, and Ananda, to go to Vaishali to visit the great lay practitioner, Vimalakirti. The disciples each recount an anecdote of their encounters with Vimalakirti’s teachings and express a reluctance to attend due to the eccentric boundlessness of Vimalakirti’s wisdom.
This scene displays a landscape in which hills and fields are outlined in simple, smooth lines and dotted with trees. Mountain peaks rise in the distance. The painting is fresh and elegant, with hues of green and gray accenting the predominantly white landscape. In the lower section of the painting is a man dressed in a red ocher robe with a round collar. With palms joined before his chest, he kneels by a pond. Above the man, two deer race by with their ears raised and all four limbs in the air. The image could be an illustration of Vimalakirti’s teachings to Upali: that all Dharma is like lightning and illusion, or like the moon reflected in water.