Yama holding the Bhavacakra or Wheel of life. Ink drawing.

The Bhavacakra or wheel of life symbolises the recurring cycle of lives from ignorance to death and from death to ignorance. In the centre are the Three Poisons: a cock symbolising greed; a snake symbolising hatred; and a pig symbolising delusion. These three emotional defilements bind people to the Wheel.

Going outwards, there are six sections between the spokes of the Wheel: these represent the Six Realms in which beings can be born: ; 1. top centre, realm of gods; 2 . top right, realm of anti-gods or titans; 3. bottom right, realm of animals; 4. bottom centre, realm of hell creatures; 5. bottom left, hungry ghosts. 6. top left, realm of human beings. The Buddha appears in all the realms

Around the edge of the Wheel, starting at the top right and proceeding clockwise, are the Twelve Causal Links: 1. a blind man symbolising ignorance, the lack of awareness of the true nature of reality; 2. a potter symbolising the shaping of physical and mental materials; 3. a jumping monkey, symbolising the rise of conscious experience, with thoughts darting to and fro; 4. two men in a boat, symbolising the distinction emerging between self and non-self; 5. a house with six windows, symbolising the five senses and the mind; 6 a pair of lovers symbolising sense perception of the outside world, using the senses which have emerged; 7. an arrow piercing a man's eye, symbolising the impinging of emotional and physical feelings; 8. a drink served by a woman, symbolising craving as a result of feeling; 9. a woman gathering fruit and flowers, symbolising the clinging to what one is craving for; 10. a pregnant woman, symbolising life reproducing itself; 11. a woman giving birth, symbolising a new life taking its course; 12. a man carrying a corpse on his back, symbolising sickness, old age, decay and death. Out of death ignorance arises again

The wheel is held in the clutches of a monster: the god Yama, representing saṃsāra, the world of becoming. Turning the wheel back, by giving up clinging and the attachment to each stage before that, eventually leads to liberation in nirvāṇa

In the "south-west" sector (the realmo f the Pretas or Hungry Ghosts) are shown pains and eruptions in bodily organs, and inconveniences, such as, to punish gluttony, a body with a very large stomach but a narrow neck through which food can barely pass (information from Prof. Richard Davis, July 1999)

1 drawing : ink on cloth ; image and border 136.3 x 113.1 cm

L.A. Waddell, The Buddhism of Tibet or Lamaism, 1895, p. 108 (reproduced and described)

Marianne Winder, Catalogue of Tibetan manuscripts and xylographs, and catalogue of thankas, banners and other paintings and drawings in the Library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London 1989, p. 102, thankas banners and paintings no. 47

Wellcome Collection 47116i

Made for L.A. Waddell by an artist from Tashi Lhunpo, from a version at Samye Monastery in Tibet which is believed to have been brought there by an Indian monk in the eighth century A.D., and which is in turn believed to be copied from a painting in the Ajantā caves