Four Arhats: Bhadra, Vajriputra, Kanaka Bharadvaja, and Kanakavatsa

This painting features four of the sixteen arhats, the original disciples of the Buddha: Bhadra with his right hand raised (top left); Vajriputra holding a flywhisk in his left hand (top right); Kanaka Bharadvaja with hands folded in his lap (bottom left); and Kanakavatsa holding his distinctive attribute, a jewel lasso (bottom right). At the top right is a group of historical figures important to the later transmission of Buddhism to Tibet: Atisha (982–1055) with his Tibetan student Dromton (1005–1064) is on the left side, and the translator Ngok Lotsawa (1059–1109) wearing a yellow pandita hat is on the right. This presence of this group of scholars, who were founders of the Khadampa tradition, suggests the patrons of this painting were from the Geluk School of Tibetan Buddhism, as they saw themselves as inheritors of the Khadampa tradition.

Arhats represent the monastic ideal and preservers of the monastic code of conduct (vinaya). The arhats are often invoked in rituals of confession and mending vows, which are performed before images such as this one.

Tibetan artists adopted Chinese conventions of depicting arhats as wizened sages with exaggerated features, living in secluded mountain caves hidden in decorative Chinese-inspired landscapes of azurite (blue) and malachite (green), drawn from Daoist immortal imagery. Arhats are typically depicted as a group of sixteen, along with additional figures of a patron, an attendant, and four guardian kings, all flanking a central image of the Buddha Shakyamuni. Based on this figural grouping of four arhats, this painting is possibly from a set of seven.