South Asian Art

This collection celebrates the art associated with two of the world’s oldest living belief systems, Hinduism and Buddhism.

In the 3rd century along the Silk Road, a key trade path linking the Asian continent to Europe, powerful and wealthy Buddhist elites commissioned artists to visualize the story of Buddha’s life on temple and shrine exteriors. Their imagery, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, drew upon Hellenistic Greek, Persian, Indian, and local traditions. Similarly, nobility in India from the 9th to 14th centuries transformed the landscape with hundreds of Hindu temples. Temple exteriors drew upon long-standing Hindu oral and written traditions to tell the stories of deities.