Temptation of Buddha by the Evil Forces of Mara (700s): Art, History and Details

Temptation of Buddha by the Evil Forces of Mara (700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Intimate shrines for personal meditation practices contained scenes from the life of the Buddha. In an episode just prior to his achievement of enlightenment, the Buddha sat in meditation and faced personifications of the final obstacles. In this exquisite rendering derived from the Greco-Roman realism of Gandharan art, demons attack him in an attempt to scare him off the path. Seductive women do their best to distract him. He remains placid and firm in his conviction that these beings have no inherent reality, and he renders them powerless.

Object facts

• Title: Temptation of Buddha by the Evil Forces of Mara
• Date: 700s
• Culture: Northern India, Kashmir, 8th century
• Type: Ivory
• Technique: ivory with gold and polychrome
• Dimensions: Overall: 13 x 8.9 cm (5 1/8 x 3 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1971.18

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Tardy. Les ivoires; évolution décorative du Ier siècle à nos jours. Paris: Tardy, 1972.
• Lee, Sherman E. "The Year in Review for 1971." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 59, no. 1 (1972): 3-46.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.