Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara Amoghapasha
Not on view
This Amoghapasha (“he whose noose is unfailing”) is the most important multi-armed sculpture of Avalokiteshvara to have survived from Southeast Asia. Its immediate stylistic antecedents were produced in early eighth-century northern India, illustrated most spectacularly at Nalanda monastery site 3, where a large stele of a twelve-armed Avalokiteshvara was discovered in the 1970s. Nalanda was one of the most influential mahaviharas (“great monasteries”). The influential Tantric teacher Vajrabodhi trained there before he resided at Srivijaya en route to China in 720. He undoubtedly played a critical role in the dissemination of this new imagery.
cat. no. 157
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