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Curated category

Buddhist art

  • Tapa ShotorTapa Shotor, also known as Tape Shotor or Tapa-e-shotor meaning Camel Hill, stands near Hadda in Afghanistan. This location served as a large Sarvastivadin…
  • Greco-BuddhismGreco-Buddhism refers to the cultural fusion of Hellenistic Greek and Buddhist traditions in Gandhara. That fusion took shape between the 4th century BC and…
  • Iconography of Gautama Buddha in Laos and ThailandThe iconography of Gautama Buddha in Laos and Thailand is not simply art. For Buddhists, a correctly rendered Buddha image is something far more charged: a…
  • Hadda, AfghanistanHadda, Afghanistan sits ten kilometers south of Jalalabad, in Nangarhar Province, and it holds a secret that puzzled scholars for over a century.
  • Buddhas and bodhisattvas in artBuddhas and bodhisattvas in art present one of the richest and most intricate visual traditions in human history. Step into a Japanese Shingon or Tibetan…
  • Buddhist architectureBuddhist architecture began taking shape in the Indian subcontinent in the 5th century BCE, when the religion itself was still forming its earliest…
  • Greco-Buddhist artAlexander the Great's military campaign reached the Indian subcontinent in 326 BC, bringing Greek culture to regions that would later become the heart of…
  • Buddhist artBuddhist art stretches from the rocky cliff faces of Afghanistan to the harbour of ancient Berenike, Egypt, where a 71-centimetre Buddha statue lay buried…
  • EmakimonoEmakimono, Japan's own tradition of illustrated horizontal handscrolls, traces back to the Nara period, between 710 and 794 CE.
  • Buddhas of BamiyanThe Buddhas of Bamiyan stood for more than fourteen centuries in a valley in Afghanistan, 130 kilometers northwest of Kabul, carved into sandstone cliffs at…
  • BhavacakraThe Bhavacakra, or wheel of life, greets visitors on the outer walls of nearly every Tibetan Buddhist temple in Tibet and India. It is not decoration.
  • Buddha in artFor the first few centuries after Gautama Buddha's death, artists avoided showing his human form. Early Buddhist communities relied on symbols to represent…