Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Sealing Depicting Heavenly Palaces
Not on view
The motif of the heavenly palace first appears in the brick temple architecture of northern India in the mid-first millennium. Heavenly, or celestial, palaces are found early in mainland Southeast Asia as part of the initial phase of Indic-style temple building. In this unique miniature depiction, Buddha occupies the central palace; bodhisattvas seated in royal ease occupy the subsidiary palaces. Below is a molded inscription citing the Buddhist Ye dhamma credo in northern Nagari script. The molding was found at a cave that served as a meditation retreat for forest monks near Songkhla in peninsular Thailand.
cat. no. 154
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