Horyuji Temple: Amitabha Buddha Triad

JAPAN, Nara, Ikoma; Hakuho period

The triad was originally housed in a shrine cabinet within the Golden Hall of the temple and was used by the mother of Empress Komyo for her personal Buddhist devotions. It is now housed in the Great Treasure Hall. It was listed as a National Treasure in 1953.
The serene Amitabha is dressed in monastic robes with hands in the abhaya (fearlessness) and varada (wish-granting) mudras. The Buddha sits on a blossoming lotus, the stalk rising from the base. A lotus nimbus surrounded by openwork webbing that has a patterned outer rim is behind the head of the central figure. The attendant Bodhisattvas Avalokitesvara and Mahasthamaprapta stand on smaller lotuses and make the same mudras with their hands symmetrically arranged. The crowned figures are looped with stoles.
A folding screen is behind the figures, and along the top are canopied images of seven Buddhas. Below the central figures in low relief are lotus-born rebirths paying reverence among the swaying foliage of the Western Pure Land. The base represents a pond carved with lotus blooms among wave patterns, the whole displaying a high level of imaginative design.