Himalayan Art Resources

Buddhist Deity: Tara Iconography

Tara Main Page

Subjects, Topics & Types:
- Description (below)
- Introduction
- Number Sets
- Compendium Texts
- Six Principal Forms & Categories
--- Green
--- White
--- Red
--- Eight Fears
--- Twenty-one
--- Miscellaneous
- Female Imagery Introduction
- Confusions: Sherab Chamma, Lakshmi
- Others...

Videos:
- All Tara Videos
- Tara Introduction: Three Points

Outline Pages:
- Tara: General Outline Page
- Green Tara Outline
- White Tara Outline
- Red Tara Outline
- Twenty-one Taras Outline Page
- Eight Fears Outline Page

Iconographic Subjects:
- Forms (Textual)
- Compendium Paintings
- Wealth Deities
- Standing (Sculpture)
- Non-standard (Sculpture)
- Relaxed Posture (Sculpture)
- Repeated Figure Paintings
- Wrathful Tara (Various Forms)
- Confusions
- Others...

The most common forms of Tara are the green which is considered special for all types of activities, white for longevity and red for power. The different forms of Tara come in all colours, numbers of faces, arms and legs, peaceful, semi-peaceful and wrathful. There are simple meditational forms representing a single figure and then there are complex forms with large numbers of retinue figures filling all types of mandala configurations. There are likely to be close to two hundred different meditational forms of Tara.

Jeff Watt [updated 4-2017, 3-2020]

(The images below are only a selection of examples from the links above).