Curated playlist
Buddhist art
- Tapa ShotorGreek-style figures once stood beside a Buddha at Tapa Shotor, a monastery in Afghanistan.
- Greco-BuddhismSome Indo-Greek coins of King Menander I pair a Buddhist wheel with a Greek wreath.
- Iconography of Gautama Buddha in Laos and ThailandNo Buddha image survives from the Buddha's own lifetime. The oldest date from five to six centuries after he died.
- Hadda, AfghanistanBuddhist sculptures at Hadda, Afghanistan, have faces that look Greek. Diggers found roughly 23,000 of them.
- Buddhas and bodhisattvas in artBudai, the Laughing Buddha, is often mistaken for the Buddha. He is an incarnation of the bodhisattva Maitreya.
- Buddhist architectureWhat happens when Japanese immigrants in Hawaii rebuild Buddhist temples without their old materials?
- Greco-Buddhist artFor centuries, Buddhist art refused to show the Buddha as a man. A riderless horse and empty seat stood in for him.
- Buddhist artEarly Buddhist artists had to tell the Buddha's story without ever showing the Buddha.
- EmakimonoAn emakimono reader unrolled a Japanese story alone, one hand at a time. Only about 60 centimeters showed at once.
- Buddhas of BamiyanIn March 2001, the Taliban began blowing up the Buddhas of Bamiyan.
- BhavacakraAt the center of the Bhavacakra, a Buddhist wheel of life, a pig, a snake and a bird chase each other in a circle.
- Buddha in artBuddha in art begins with an absence. For the first centuries of Buddhism, artists largely or entirely avoided showing the person of the Buddha. Worshippers saw symbols and relics standing in his place. Then the figure appeared, and it…