SAM Talks

 


Thinking Outside the Nesting Boxes: Buddhist Reliquaries from a Ninth-Century Chinese Monastic Crypt
Lecture by Eugene Wang
April 13, 2006
7–8 pm
SAAM


An underground crypt was discovered in the Tang-dynasty pagoda basement of a Chinese Buddhist monastery in 1987, yielding hundreds of precious artifacts and four Buddha relics. One set of eight nesting reliquary caskets, arranged in the manner of Russian dolls, contains examples of the earliest surviving mandalas in China. Eugene Wang, professor of Asian Art at Harvard University, will "unpack" the nesting caskets to reveal the vast ancient and medieval Chinese imaginary cosmos embedded inside.

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