Daruma Seated in Meditation

Category

Library Item

Item no

18996

Title

Daruma Seated in Meditation

Artist / maker

Kano, Tosen Nakanobu

Date

1845

Size

28.8 x 14.5 cm

Type

Ink and colour; Mixed media

Location

Art and Design Library

From an album of miniature hanging scrolls:

Bodhidharma (in Japanese, Daruma) was a Chinese monk who lived in the 5th or 6th century. He is regarded as the first patriarch of Chan (Zen) Buddhism, having been responsible for its transmission from India to China.

This album comprises 76 pages of miniature paintings (and some calligraphies), the majority by artists of the Kano lineage, who worked for the ruling military regime. Each work is signed and sealed in miniature, and has been given a full brocade mounting as if it were a hanging scroll.

Information provided by Dr Rosina Buckland (National Museum of Scotland).

This album was donated to Edinburgh City Libraries by Marie Ferguson Dyer in honour of her father Henry Dyer. Dyer was a Scottish engineer who became the first Principal of the Imperial College of Engineering in Tokyo in 1872.

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