Abhaya Mudra is a mudra, a symbolic hand-gesture of the Indian religious traditions, known in Sanskrit as Abhaya Mudra and signifying fearlessness and protection.
Form and meaning
In this seal the right hand is raised to shoulder height, palm outward and fingers up. It signifies reassurance, safety and the dispelling of fear, and is among the earliest gestures shown in Buddhist and Hindu iconography.
Mudras appear across Hindu and Buddhist ritual, iconography, classical dance and yoga, where a fixed position of the hands carries a settled meaning or is held to direct attention and breath. The gesture is described here within those documented traditions.
History and attestation
Abhaya Mudra's best-known narrative attribution is the account of the Buddha calming the enraged elephant Nalagiri, sent against him by his rival Devadatta, simply by raising his hand in this gesture, a story recorded in later Buddhist narrative literature and widely depicted in Buddhist art across South and Southeast Asia. The seal appears extensively in standing Buddha statuary from the Gandharan and Mathuran schools of early Indian Buddhist art onward, and it is not exclusively Buddhist: several Hindu deities, including standing forms of Vishnu and Shiva, are also depicted with the right hand raised in the same fearlessness-granting gesture, reflecting a shared iconographic vocabulary across the two traditions.