Manjusri

In one of the exhibition’s most beautiful paintings the serene, long-haired bodhisattva Manjusri, a spiritual benefactor drawn in flowing lines, sits in meditation next to a comically ferocious, recumbent lion.

In this Trinity Vajrapani answers to Brahmā, or Jehovah, the "All-father," Manjusri is the "deified teacher," the counterpart of Crishna or Jesus, and Avalokitesvara is the "Holy Spirit."

He evidently regarded the Abhayagiri as the principal religious centre and says it had 5000 monks as against 3000 in the Mahâvihâra, but though he dwells on the gorgeous ceremonial, the veneration of the sacred tooth, the representations of Gotama's previous lives, and the images of Maitreya, he does not allude to the worship of Avalokita and Mañjusrî or to anything that can be called definitely Mahayanist.

While in Southern Buddhism the idea of this possibility of development seems to have been little seized upon and followed up, in Northern Buddhism as early as 400 A.D. the worship of two Buddhas elect named Manjusri and Avalokitesvara, or personified Wisdom and Power, had already become general.

Manjusri,20 the Great Being or "Prince Royal," is the personification of wisdom, and especially of the mystic religious insight which has produced the Great Vehicle or canon of Northern Buddhism; or, as a Japanese author says, the third collection of the Tripitaka was that made by Manjusri and Maitreya.