Sep 28, 2008 10:38 am US/Eastern
CBS 2 At The Met: Palm Leaf Sacred Texts
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
This exhibition celebrates the art of ancient books. Sacred texts of Buddha's teachings along with miniature paintings produced in monasteries in Eastern India. Visitors can see thirty examples from the 10th to the 13th century, of Indian manuscripts using the palm leaf method. Curator John Guy tells CBS2's Dana Tyler that many of the works are on display for the first time at the Met.
John Guy explains. "They're unique in one particular and very specific way in that they're all produced not on paper but on incised and illustrated palm leaf. And this was the preferred medium for making books in early, in ancient and medieval India."
The primary reason for texts like these was to spread the sacred word of Buddha. John Guy points out an example. "They dispense their divine wisdom and their compassion to all living creatures. So shown here with a devotee at his feet looking in awestruck veneration at the Buddhist Bodhisattvas. And then the passages of text which are from the Prajnaparamita text, essentially describing the method by which a devotee can reach divine wisdom."
Since the objects are so small, there's an enlargement of one of the miniature paintings set up right alongside it. Guy says, "The sheer beauty of line, the image of the white Buddhist Bodhisattvas represented here, the face in three-quarter profile the projection of the second eye, gracious figure, seated enthroned in this architectural niche, attended by this kneeling woman, clearly awestruck by the transcendental wisdom that he's transmitting to her. His divine teaching is clearly inspiring."
You won't find books like these in the family library. Only the wealthy would commission a text, then give it away to their great teacher, the family's Guru, and then stored in the monastic libraries for use primarily by the monks of the monastic community.
These pages, also called folios were not bound like typical books. Visitors will see one of the oldest objects in the exhibition, a cover for a palm manuscript in a display case. Curator John Guy explains. "We have a complete pair of covers, binding covers, for the loose palm leaf folios. What we show is the inner surfaces of these covers, the outer covers show the aging. There are holes in two places where a string is fed through simply to stop them from slipping, but essentially they're unbound folios. It probably dates from the late 10th century, so the 900's A.D., when the great monasteries in eastern India were at their peak. This was a period of enormous prosperity for Buddhism in northern India.
"Early Buddhist Manuscript Painting: The Palm-Leaf Tradition," is at the Met until March 22, 2009.
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