Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Railing coping fragment with lotus bloom meander
India, Bharhut Great Stupa, Satna District, Madhya Pradesh
Not on view
The decoration of this coping from the enclosure railing at the Great Stupa at Bharhut is a testimony to the power of the lotus flower as a metaphor for renewal and regeneration. An embodiment of the life force in Indian religious art, the lotus bloom comes to evoke the purity of the Buddha, emerging radiant and unmarked from an impure world. Here the lotus vine is without beginning or end, emphatically asserting creation from the primordial waters. The principal motif on the coping, the lotus vine encircled the stupa in an auspicious embrace, instilling good fortune to all who walked the enclosure path.
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