An important deity in traditional Korean shamanism is Sansin (山神), the Mountain Spirit, and this key figure was eventually introduced and absorbed into Buddhism. In Buddhism, there is a mountain god that is one of a number of gods charged with guarding and protecting Buddha and his teachings. In Korea, Buddhist temples are often located on or near mountains, so most temples pay tribute to the Buddhist mountain god with a painting or small shrine. But most of the extant Buddhist paintings of the mountain spirit reflect the iconography of folk shamanistic (i.e., Sansin), rather than Buddhism. This tendency is exemplified by this particular painting, which follows the traditional folk representation of the Mountain Spirit: a numinous old man sitting in a mountain landscape, backgrounded by pine trees, and accompanied by a tiger, which was considered a sacred, ethereal animal of the mountains. The mountain spirit is painted large against a simplified background, and here he is attended by the “Immortal Child,” a motif from Buddhism and Taoism. The tiger is drawn in a manner common to folk paintings.