Excerpt from The Gods of Northern Buddhism: Their History, Iconography and Progressive Evolution Through the Northern Buddhist Countries IT is difficult for those who are unacquainted with the iconography of the gods of the Mahayana Pantheon to realize the degree of interest that may be attached to even a crude representation of a Northern Buddhist divinity. To the uninitiated the images of these deities are only of value as works Of art, or as grotesque curios, with their various heads and many arms but to the initiated, apart from their artistic merit, they furnish an almost inexhaustible fund for study and research. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.