Four harmonious animals
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The four harmonious animals figure is a Buddhist legend which can often be found as subject in Tibetan art.
This is a popular Tibetan scene which is often found as wall painting in Tibetan religious buildings and represents an elephant standing under a fruit tree carrying a monkey, a hare and a bird on top of each other.
The scene refers to a Buddhist legend which tells that four animals were trying to find out who could be considered as being the oldest. The elephant said that the tree was already fully grown when he was young, the monkey that the tree was small when he was young, the hare that he saw the tree as a sapling when he was young and the bird claimed that he had carried the seed from which the tree grew. So the bird was recognized by the other animals as the oldest, and the four animals lived together in harmony, helping each other to enjoy the fruits of the tree.
In Tibetan this group of four animals is normally referred to as mthun pa spun bzhi (four harmonious brothers)[1] or as mthun pa rnam bzhi[2]
The primary source for the Buddhist legend of the four harmonious brothers is the Vinayavastu (´dul ba´i gzhi) which forms the first section of the Kanjur (ka´gyur), the canon of Tibetan Buddhism.[2]
