Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Fragment of a railing coping: a winged griffin and youthful combatant
India, Amaravati Great Stupa, Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh
Not on view
This fragment of a coping from the first limestone railing at Amaravati’s Great Stupa formed part of a frieze of grand beasts, both natural and mythological, alternating with athletic young men. The imagery likely reflects that pastoral people’s wealth and power were defined by their taming of the animal world. Griffin imagery, introduced into Mauryan northern India from Achaemenid Iran, was sustained by ongoing cultural exchange with Hellenized West Asia. This tableau, once framed by aquatic lotus-vine creepers above and a Hellenistic bead-and-reel pattern below, points to the hybridity of the imagery circulating in early Buddhist India.
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