Before The Buddha: The Beginnings of Buddhist Imagery in Early India, 200 BCE – 400 CE

March 9, 2024 at 10 am (Pacific Time)

Railing pillar fragment. Bharhut Great Stupa, Madhya Pradesh ca. 150–100 BCE. Allahabad Museum, Prayagraj, UP, India

Drum panel with stupa veneration and seminal Buddha-life events India, Andhra Pradesh ca. 1st century CE. Amaravati Heritage Centre and Museum, Andhra Pradesh, India

Before the appearance of the Buddha image some 500 or so years after his lifetime, the visual repertoire used to teach the Buddha’s message was one rich in its celebration of the natural world, presided over by its personified spirits, the yakshas and nagas. This talk explores the earliest recorded cultural landscape of Buddhist India, that of monastic Buddhism, and the cult of relics that was central to Buddhist worship. The rich archaeological and artistic legacy, when read alongside the canonical and narrative literature of early Buddhism, paints a vision of a fragrant and colorful world where the monastery served as a sanctuary for mendicants and a place of beauty and quietude intended to attract lay follower.

John Guy

John Guy is the Florence and Herbert Irving Curator of the Arts of South and Southeast Asia at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and an elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries London (2003) and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2016). Prior to that he served for 22 years as senior curator of Indian art at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He has curated numerous international art exhibitions and published widely, Woven Cargoes. Indian Textiles in the East (T&H, 1998), Indian Temple Sculpture (V&A, 2007), Wonder of the Age. Master Painters of India (Met, co-author 2011), Interwoven Globe. The Worldwide Textile Trade (Met, co-author 2013), Lost Kingdoms. Hindu-Buddhist Sculpture of Early Southeast Asia (Met, 2014), Art & Independence. Y.G. Srimati and the Indian Style (Mapin, 2019) and most recently Tree & Serpent. Early Buddhist Art in India (Met, 2023).