The dissemination of Buddhist classics and Buddhist study in Han China and Tibet followed that of the Mahayanist study from India. But the belief in Arhat plays an important role in Buddhism in both trgioms, especially the belief in the Sixteen Arhats (later on the Eighteen Arhats), who had been equally worshipped with Buddha and Bodhisattvas and became a popular motif in painting and sculpture that occupies a large part of imperial collection. during the Qianlong reign the Tibetan Buddhism became the national religion in order to keep the Tibetan and Mongolian powers under contral. It was particularly popular in the palace where a large number of Tibetan - style thangkas of the Sixteen or Eighteen Arhats were painted, collected and enshrined. These paintings are somehow different from those in the earlier imperial collection in title, iconography, but in the making og the standards of the Eighteen Arhats charactrtistic of the Qianlong reign.
