The White Path Between Two Rivers (1200s): Art, History and Details

The White Path Between Two Rivers (1200s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This painting is a visual presentation of a teaching ascribed to the Chinese Buddhist monk Shandao (善導) (613–681). It describes a challenging journey to the land of the Buddha Amida along a narrow path between a river of fire and a river of water. The story is about escaping the six paths of reincarnation—the heavens and hells, as well as the realms of humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and fierce beings. The Buddha Amida appears at the top in his Pure Land, or Western Paradise.

Object facts

• Title: The White Path Between Two Rivers
• Date: 1200s
• Culture: Japan, Kamakura period (1185–1333)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink, color, gold, silver, and cut gold on silk
• Dimensions: Painting: 124.7 x 50.8 cm (49 1/8 x 20 in.); Mounted: 215.1 x 67.7 cm (84 11/16 x 26 5/8 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1955.44

A detail from the museum

The Six Realms of Transmigration are the: heavenly realm, hells, human realm, animal realm, realm of hungry ghosts, and realm of fierce beings.

Collection credit

Gift of The Norweb Foundation

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• Lee, Sherman E. Japanese Decorative Style. [Cleveland]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1961.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.

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.