Connections/Relics

I'm John Guy, I'm the curator for India and southeast Asia here at the Met. My topic is "Relics."

I connect relics and ritual strongly in my mind. I'd have to take that back to my boyhood years when I served as an altar

boy in a rather High Church of England, serving at altar, officiating

with communion. I found that whole process so formal and so structured. It was required that

you would not take breakfast before presenting communion. On occasions, I found myself slipping to the floor with a momentary lapse of consciousness.

So concerned with otherworldly things, things beyond the mundane. It formulated my mind very early that

objects had enormous power. The communion cup and the tray become the catalyst for this

transmigration. I think it's set my mind on this path and made me receptive to when I came across other powerful objects.

I've devoted most of my professional working life to the ancient arts of the Hindu/Buddhist world. That's necessitated extensive travel.

And that in itself gives further opportunities to go to these great places which just resonate.

I have a little mantra that I operate by, which is I will not lecture or speak about a place that I've not

been to. I think it's terribly important to have actually experienced the place, even if what is there today is a mere shadow or if there's even very little trace of what made this place important a thousand years ago. The issue of the

container versus the contents in reliquaries is a very interesting one. Some of the medieval objects were

expressly made to enshrine a physical part of the body of a saint. It might be the forearm and hand

or it may be a skull. And these were literal encasements.

They mimicked the form of the bodily part. The containers themselves are very potent.

In the Indian world, the reliquaries are miniatures of architecture, in which relics of the Buddha and his disciples

were placed. You see the stupa, you see the Buddha. They're synonymous.

Even the teachings of the great figures in history becomes an object of worship

in its own right. If it had been used for study and citation

it would not be in this condition. Some of these

Indian stone relics, they often carry inscriptions indicating whose remains are contained in the relics. I had the privilege, recently, to speak a little to a group of monks. I recited

the names and there was this intake of air. They were totally riveted by this. The thing about relics

which I think is extraordinary, and what makes them I think so immediate and

contemporary, is they wire you in, they wire you straight in, right back

to the point of the Buddha's death, right back to when the relics of

Christ were scattered across early Europe. You're right back into this, the very beginnings of great traditions.

People want to visit holy places because it will somehow enrich them and empower them. They will be cleansed or in

some other way benefit by making pilgrimage. And so you get an industry of pilgrim souvenirs.

These might be little tiny paintings. They might be little talismans.

The Mahabodi Temple at Botgaya is the place of enlightenment and these little models were made for those who could not make the pilgrimage

who were not physically able or prosperous enough. These would allow you to experience a little of that spiritual power.

Here in New York all roads lead to the Metropolitan Museum. It's kind of the modern day equivalent of a pilgrimage route. A Mecca for

the twenty first century.