Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Stele with the Twin Shravasti Miracles
Not on view
This is a rare representation of a seminal event in the life of the Buddha: his enactment at Shravasti, in northern India, of magic to convert a group of nonbelievers. These miracles have sources in both the Pali canon of Theravada Buddhism and the Sanskrit canon. For his first miracle, the Buddha caused the seeds of a mango to flower instantly into a fruit-bearing tree; for the second, he caused multiple Buddha images to appear in the sky. Here these stories appear conflated, the radiating branches of the newly grown mango tree supporting the Buddha manifestations.
cat. no. 126
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