Eighteen arhats
The eighteen arhats (Chinese: 十八羅漢; pinyin: Shíbā Luóhàn; Wade–Giles: Shih-pa Lo-han) are a group of arhats that are charged to protect the Buddhist faith and to wait on earth for the coming of Maitreya, an enlightened Buddha prophesied to arrive on earth many millennia after Gautama Buddha's death (parinirvana).
This list of eighteen arhats is an expanded version of the group of sixteen arhats. According to the Princeton Dictionary, "the most common of these additional members were Nandimitra (the putative subject of the text in which the protectors are first mentioned by name) and Piṇḍola Bhāradvāja (another transcription of the arhat who already appears on the list), although Mahākāśyapa also frequently appears."[1]
In China, the eighteen arhats are a popular subject in Buddhist art, such as the famous Chinese group of glazed pottery luohans from Yixian from about 1000 CE.
Notes
- ↑ Robert E. Buswell Jr., Donald S. Lopez Jr., The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (Princeton: 2014), s.v. ṣoḍaśasthavirā
External links
Eighteen Arhats, Wikipedia
