‘Tibet and India: Buddhist Traditions and Transformations’

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Holland Cotter

Tenzing Rigdol’s “Pin drop silence: Eleven-headed Avalokitesvara.”

NEW YORK--- Floating high in a small gallery above the Metropolitan Museum’s South Asian and Southeast Asian galleries, the jewel of a show called “Tibet and India: Buddhist Traditions and Transformations” asks how a religion fading away in one place manages to find its way to and blossom in another. The mode of transmission is, at least in part, through art. By the 11th century A.D., Buddhism’s days in its homeland, Hindu-dominated India, were numbered. Institutionally, it survived primarily within great monastic universities, libraries and ateliers like Nalanda, a religious center of learning from the fifth century A.D., which was a go-to destination for countries outside of India desirous of checking their own versions of Buddhism against authoritative sources. Tibet was one of these countries. [link]

Metropolitan Museum of Art: "Tibet and India: Buddhist Traditions and Transformations" (Ends June 18); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY; (212) 535-7710; metmuseum.org