Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Panel with devotees honoring the Dharma-wheel and nagas protecting the relics at Ramagrama stupa
India, Dhulikata, Karimnagar District, Telangana
Not on view
This is a wonderfully direct and unencumbered scene of Buddhist devotion. Two male devotees worship the wheel, a metaphor for the power of the Buddha’s teachings, the Dharma. The panel represents the veneration of the Buddha’s corporeal relics retrieved from his cremation pyre. Divided into eight parts, one portion of the relics was interred in a stupa at Ramagrama, where, following a flood, it came into the possession of the nagas, or serpent deities, who guarded it fiercely. The representation of this legend, with the nagas entwined protectively around the dome of the stupa as here, was a favored visual narrative in the ancient Andhra territories.
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