It is one of the most fascinating shows that I have ever seen

I’VE JUST RETURNED FROM A TRIP TO NEW YORK.

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While there, I took the opportunity to see a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: ‘Tree and Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India’. It’s about the origins of Buddhist art, and is one of the most fascinating – and moving – shows I have ever seen.

The core period covered by the exhibition is the first four centuries AD, some half a millennium after the Buddha’s lifetime when regional artforms across Afghanistan and north India gave birth to the art we recognise today as Buddhist: for example, the Buddha represented wearing a Greek toga, and the richly illustrated mythical stories from his life in high relief sculpture adorning assembly halls, gateways and relic stupas (the great domed memorials containing the Buddha’s ashes).

The exhibition has taken eight years to plan, with pieces from India and also from US and UK collections; it has involved a huge logistical effort. Some exhibits take us back to discoveries made in the 19th century (marbles from the Indian village of Amaravati, for example, which were removed by the British in the 1840s.)