The Indian Buddhist Iconography, Mainly Based on the Sadhanamala and Other Cognate Tantric Texts of Rituals c11.2

c11.2

The Niṣpannayogāvalī of Mahāpaṇḍita Abhayākara Gupta mentions altogether three sets¹ of sixteen Bodhisattvas. Some names occur in one or two or all the three lists, which when analysed, give an account of twenty-five Bodhisattvas in all. These three lists are headed in one by Samantabhadra and in two others by Maitreya, the Future Buddha. Images of many of these Bodhisattvas are found in India, but their number is the largest in China as would be seen in the Two Lamaistic Pantheons by Walter Eugene Clark. The three lists as given by Abhayākara Gupta are stated below for facility of comparison, before the Bodhisattvas are actually described with the help of the Dhyānas.