Buddha Shakyamuni granting boons
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.This bronze Buddha, recovered in the 1990s by villagers from a rivulet near the monastery at Nelakondapalli, is the largest such bronze image preserved in the Deccan. Portable icons, along with palm-leaf sutra manuscripts, were routinely carried home by foreign monks, as described by the Chinese pilgrim-monk Faxian in the early fifth century CE. (A series of larger metal icons, the so-called Missionary Buddhas, produced in Sri Lanka, have also been found in Southeast Asia.) Such metal images testify to the patronage of the Visnukundin dynasty of Andhra, successors to the Ikshvaku rulers, who made gifts for the maintenance of Buddhist monasteries as late as the sixth century CE.
Artwork Details
- Title: Buddha Shakyamuni granting boons
- Period: Visnukundin
- Date: late 5th–6th century CE
- Culture: India, Nelakondapalli, Khammam District, Telangana
- Medium: Copper alloy
- Dimensions: H. 21 in. (52 cm); W. 10 in. (25.4 cm); D. 9 in. (22.9 cm incl. 4 cm tang on back)
- Classification: Sculpture
- Credit Line: Lent by State Museum Hyderabad
- Rights and Reproduction: Photo by Theirry Ollivier
- Curatorial Department: Asian Art