Buddhist Deity: Tara, White, Iconography & Religious Context
White Tara Main PageThree Categories of White Tara: (Forms & Types)
--- Tara of Long Life (Wish-fulfilling Wheel)
--- Twenty-One Taras (Suryagupta & Atisha)
--- Miscellaneous Forms of White Tara
Videos:
- White Tara, Part 1 (introduction)
- White Tara, Part 2 (iconography)
- Tara Introduction: Three Points
- White Tara: Three Iconographic Categories
- All Tara Videos
Iconography:
- Tara Introduction
- Forms (Rinjung Lhantab)
- Best Examples
- Masterworks
Study Topics:
- Three Types
- Function
- Traditions
Religious Context:
- Source Texts
- Outline Page
- Long-life Deities
- Health, Healing & Longevity
- Meditational Deity Page
- Deities According to Function
- Colours & Activities
- Metaphor: curing contagion
- Tantra: Anuttarayoga
- Glossary
- Tara Main Page
- Confusions
- Others...
The principal form of the deity that appears in art is the White Tara of Longevity. This form originates with a number of different early scholars such as Atisha, Bari Lotsawa, Nyen, Marpa, Vanaratna and Shakya Shri Bhadra. A number of white forms of Tara are included in the Suryagupta and Atisha systems of the Twenty-one Taras. A third category of miscellaneous forms of Tara can be added that rarely appear in art other than in compendium sets of paintings depicting the Bari Gyatsa or Drub Thab Gyatso collections of deities.
Database Search: All Images | Painting | Sculpture | With Consort
Jeff Watt 5-2011 [updated 4-2017, 3-2020]
(The images below are only a selection of examples from the links above).
