Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Ayaka cornice with three narrative scenes
India, Nagarjunakonda, Gunter District, Andhra Pradesh
Not on view
By the third century CE, offering platforms (ayakas) had become major locations for narrative and decorative sculpture at Andhra stupas. Cornices—the uppermost horizontal element crowning the ayaka—were sculpted from single slabs up to twelve feet in length and divided into narratives separated by pairs of garlanded pilasters between which amorous couples (mithunas) often appear. Three such scenes are preserved here, two relating to the lives of past bodhisattvas (enlightened beings that refrain from entering nirvana in order to help others) and one to the Buddha, at center. The latter is a battle scene, likely representing the War of the Relics, in which contending rulers laid claim to the Buddha’s corporeal remains, the first and highest relics of Buddhism.
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