156 BULLETIN 148, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Indian and first Chinese Patriarch. He arrived in China in 520 A. D. 

 and established himself in a temple in Loyang. During nine years of 

 liis stay there he remained sunk in profound meditation, neither 

 moving nor speaking, so that his legs had become paralyzed owing 

 to their long disuse. In popular art his figure is often treated in a 

 humorous manner, being reduced to a comical head and round body 

 without arms or legs, which are supposed to have withered away from 

 disuse. Height, 12}^ inches. Japan. (Cat. No. 325102, U.S.N.M.) 

 Gift of Miss Carrie S. Tisdel. 



238. Miniature of a Tibetan Buddha. — Statuette of bronze, gilt, 

 inclosed in a small shrine. Height of image, 2}^ inches; of shrine, 

 3K inches. Shanghai, China. (Plate 53 (right). Cat. No. 158309, 

 U.S.N.M.) 



239. Kammaracham. — Ordination service of a Buddhist monk. 

 Manuscript written on strips of palm leaf, written on both sides in 

 the Pali language in the Laos characters. The writing is done by 

 means of a sharp stylus, and then ink is rubbed over so as to make 

 the markings with the stylus visible. GUt on the edges, inclosed by 

 two wooden tablets secured by a cord passing through them. At 

 the end of the cord is a fish carved of wood and a bundle of bamboo 

 rings. The fish as a symbol was adopted by the Buddhists from 

 Hinduism. In Hindu mythology a fish, that was the disguise of 

 Brahma or Vishnu, was the savior of Manu (the Hindu Noah), in the 

 great flood. The first incarnation of Vishnu was in the form of a 

 fish {the matsya avatar), and generally is the fish considered symbol 

 of good luck and favorable omen. In the late Mahayana texts 

 Buddha is compared to a fisher. Length, 23 K inches; width, 2% 

 inch. Laos, Further India. (Cat. No. 217669, U.S.N.M.) 



240. Pair of Buddhist saints or worshipers. — Statuettes of wood, 

 lacquered and gilt, standing on a base of rocks which rest on a plat- 

 form. Height, 15K inches. Japan. (Cat. No. 325101, U.S.N.M.) 

 Gift of Miss Carrie S. Tisdel. 



241. Japanese vajra. — Bronze. The vajra (Tibetan, dorje), lit- 

 erally, diamond, or that which is indestructible, symbolic of the true 

 doctrine which can not be destroyed, is the ritual scepter or wand of 

 Mahayana or northern Buddhism. It is originally the thunderbolt 

 of Indra, the Hindu god of the atmosphere, only that the points of 

 the darts are closed. "The Nepalese scriptures say that a contest 

 once occurred between Buddha and Indra, in which the latter was 

 defeated, and had wrested from him his chief and peculiar instrument 

 of power, the vajra or thunderbolt, which was appropriated as a 

 trophy by the victor, and has ever since been adopted by his followers 

 as the favorite emblem of their religion." ^^ The Tibetans believe 



52 William Woodville Kockhill, Notes on the Ethnology of Tibet. Report rfthe U. S. National Museum 

 1893, p. 740. 



