Vajrapani, the name means vajra in hand, the bearer of the thunderbolt-sceptre, is the bodhisattva who embodies the power or might of all the buddhas, and he is among the oldest of the great bodhisattvas to appear in the visual record. In the developed tradition he forms one of a triad of the three protective bodhisattvas: Manjushri who embodies the wisdom of the buddhas, Avalokiteshvara who embodies their compassion, and Vajrapani who embodies their power, the strength and energy through which awakened activity is carried out and obstacles are overcome. His most famous early appearances are in the Gandharan sculpture of the north-western subcontinent, where, in the centuries around the beginning of the common era, he attends the historical Buddha as a muscular, club- or vajra-bearing guardian.
Art historians have long noted that this powerfully built attendant frequently borrows the body-type, and sometimes the very attributes, of the Greek hero Herakles, whose imagery had reached the region in the wake of Alexander's conquests, one of the most cited instances of the Greco-Buddhist artistic exchange, in which a classical Mediterranean form was pressed into the service of the Buddhist guardian of the Buddha's might. In later Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism Vajrapani develops fierce, wrathful forms as a powerful protector against harmful forces and hindrances, and he is an important deity in Tibet and across the Buddhist world. He is the divine embodiment of spiritual power placed at the service of awakening.