The Two Realms Mandala

The Two Realms Mandala, Ryōkai Mandara (両界曼荷羅), is a pair of great paintings that map the esoteric cosmos as an assembly of deities around Dainichi. Brought from China by Kūkai in 806, they hang facing each other in the halls of Shingon temples, one representing compassion and the other wisdom, two aspects of a single truth.

The Womb Realm

The Taizōkai, Womb Realm, represents the Buddha's compassion, nurturing all beings like a mother. At its centre is an eight-petalled lotus: Dainichi in the middle, in the meditation mudrā, with four buddhas and four bodhisattvas on the petals. Around it spread concentric courts holding hundreds of figures, from bodhisattvas to fierce wisdom kings and the gods of the outer world.

The Diamond Realm

The Kongōkai, Diamond Realm, represents the Buddha's indestructible wisdom. It is arranged as a grid of nine assemblies, each a small mandala, with Dainichi in the wisdom-fist mudrā at the centre of the principal assembly. Read in one direction, the grid describes enlightenment unfolding into the world; in the other, the practitioner's path to awakening.

Great examples

  • Takao Mandala, Jingoji. Painted in gold and silver on purple silk in the ninth century, the oldest surviving pair in Japan.
  • The coloured mandalas of Tōji. A brilliantly coloured ninth-century pair, the model for countless later copies.

Collecting notes

  • Painted, printed and embroidered mandalas of the Edo and Meiji periods are the usual forms on the market. A matched pair is far more desirable than a single realm.
  • Check the silk and pigments carefully, especially gold, which can flake. See Caring for Hanging Scrolls.

In the collection

Browse Buddhist paintings and esoteric Buddhist art. Our collector concierge can search Japan for a mandala pair.

See also

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