Arts of Bodhi East Asian Buddhist art

Image rights

Published 14 May 2026

bodhi reproduces images from open-access museum collections under their declared rights statements, with attribution preserved verbatim where the source requires it. This page documents how images are licensed, how attribution is structured, and how to request a correction or takedown.

Per-tier rights statements

Every reproduced image carries a rights line in its caption block. The line is built from the source collection’s own declared rights statement, not paraphrased.

Tier 1 (CC0):

Cleveland Museum of Art (CC0 — public domain dedication)

The Met and Cleveland use CC0 1.0 Universal (public-domain dedication). Smithsonian uses CC0 via its Open Access initiative. Wikimedia Commons PD-art images carry the underlying public-domain status of the source work (e.g., PD-Art-old-100) plus the photograph’s own status (typically PD-self).

Tier 2 (open-access in practice, attribution preserved):

For ColBase, the rights line on every reproduced image is the verbatim Japanese attribution required by the source:

出典：ColBase（https://colbase.nich.go.jp/）

bodhi additionally surfaces this line in the figure caption, not only in metadata, so it remains legible to readers and to AI extractors.

Tier 3 (text-only, never reproduced):

Tier-3 images are not reproduced on bodhi. The article links to the collection’s own catalogue page; the rights line in the citation reads:

Image at British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA) — see catalogue link

File-level verification

Every wired image is verified at the file-page level — not the search-results page, not the API summary. The production build is gated by pnpm check:uncleared: any image without a verified rights line under /public/images/cleared/ fails the build.

The verification chain:

  1. The image is downloaded from the source collection’s official URL or its Wikimedia Commons mirror.
  2. The Commons SHA1 (when applicable) and the museum’s file-page rights statement are recorded.
  3. The image, rights line, and source URL travel together as a single WorkImage block in the article frontmatter.
  4. ColBase terms are re-verified annually against the official wording.

Visual triage

Search APIs sometimes return images that do not match the requested accession. bodhi inspects every candidate image visually before wiring, matching figure-specific iconographic markers (eleven heads stacked for Jūichimen, sword and lasso for Fudō, descending procession for raigō, and so on). A wrong image is worse than no image; if no Tier-1 or verified Tier-2 image survives this check, the article ships without inline reproduction.

Takedown and correction procedure

bodhi takes rights-holders’ claims seriously. If you believe a reproduced image is misattributed, mis-licensed, or improperly reproduced:

  • Email the editor with the article URL, the contested image, and the basis of the claim. Editor address is the GitHub-profile-listed contact for Sam Shephard.
  • GitHub issue at the project repository is the canonical alternate. Issues marked with the image-rights label receive priority.

The standard response time is 7 business days. Reproductions that are contested in good faith are taken down pending verification, not after. If verification confirms the contested claim, the image is removed permanently and the article carries an editorial note describing the takedown and citing the catalogue alternative.

Editorial corrections (non-image)

Source disagreements, attribution arguments, primary-text translation choices, or scholarship-currency concerns: file a GitHub issue with the article URL, the contested claim, and the source basis. Corrections that materially alter a claim trigger an editorial-note addendum on the article itself.

bodhi does not accept sponsored editorial. Images are not used in advertising, in third-party commercial publications, or in adjacency to sponsored content. Re-use of bodhi’s editorial text is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 — separately from, and additional to, the per-source rights line on each reproduced image. The licences on the underlying images do not flow through to the editorial prose, and the editorial licence does not flow through to the images.