Buddha in the Far East

From the Oriental and Judaica Collections at the Royal Library of Denmark:

" Anonymous: Ershiba fojiao zhi xiang (28 pictures of Buddhist figures)

Five sheets with handpainted Buddhist figures between two covers. Chinese or Tibetan from early 20th Century.

The figures portray Sakyamuni (Shijiamouni) his two disciple Ananda (Anantuo) and Kasyapa (Qie(ka)yebo), three guardian figurers and 18 Arhats (Luohan). Accompaning Buddha and each of the eighteen Arhat are explanatory texts.

On the bach side of the covers lotus plants and flower can be seen."

Japanese Flora

These images come from ten albums of flora containing more than 700 images from the Museum at the University of Tokyo: honzo database (english home page). [via armchair aquarium annex].

I *still* don't have an asian language pack on this computer so I can't say anything more about these, although the year 1708 is mentioned - I've cleaned up the background in a few of the images but didn't adjust anything else. Click on the images above for greatly enlarged versions.

Later: Jenny kindly informs us: "It is herbalism or pharmaceutical sciences. In 1708 Ekiken Kaibara wrote the book of "Yamato Honzo"(Japanese herbalism).before that Japanese learn from China. Honzo-Zufu , picture book of herbs by Kanen Iwasaki".