Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Lotus Base with Squatting Gana Figure
Not on view
This pedestal, a rarity in Dvaravati art, shows a familiar motif in early Indian Buddhism: an obese dwarf supporting emblems of the conquering faith. Such grotesques represent pre-Buddhist nature-cult deities (yakshas and yakshis), the spirit forces that inhabited the landscape, submitting to the authority of the new religion. This sculpture was recovered in Ayutthaya, but, like so much religious imagery found at the former capital, it must have been transferred there in Ayutthaya’s heyday, before the 1767 sack by the Burmese. It perhaps came from the ancient city of U Thong, a major center of Dvaravati culture.
cat. no. 17
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