The Tree & Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India, 200 BCE–400 CE, was a spectacular exhibit that ran from July 21–November 13, 2023 at the Met.
The exhibition presented both the pre-Buddhist origins of figurative sculpture in India and the early narrative traditions that were central to this formative moment in early Indian art, with 140 sacred objects featured. These objects all originated in temples and Buddhist Stupas and it is hard to avoid their religious origins and spiritual meaning.
It was like walking into a temple. The first thing I saw was a large, powerful, and beautifully preserved 3,000-year-old statue of my beloved Goddess Lakshmi. But it wasn't the usual Hindu representation. It was a Lakshmi in her Buddhist form. And in this form, she was holding her breast and was partially naked, which was not her usual, sari-clad look. I learned that Lakshmi was an important and powerful Buddhist goddess as well. She and her husband Vishnu began their lives in the Indus Valley Hindu worship more than 5000 years ago but, when Buddhism became an alternative Indian philosophy, Hinduism's favorite gods and goddesses were folded into this new tradition.
The offering of her breath, in the Buddhist tradition, was meant to be a nurturing offering of milk to the world.
John Guy, Curator of the Arts of South and Southeast Asia in The Met's Department of Asian Art, offered an audio explanation and interpretation of the statue: "Here, you're standing before an extraordinary image, fully realized in the round, of the earliest, quintessential, goddess of India, Sri. She's associated with life, with motherhood, with fecundity, with beginnings. She's at one with these extraordinary lotus plants which envelop her body. They don't so much envelop her body as she is part of them. It's well-known and referred to in Indian poetry that when you've endured the extreme heat and humidity, and when the monsoon finally breaks, it's an enormous relief for the entire community. In anticipation of the monsoon breaking the frogs come out and croak and the peacocks give out their very distinctive cry and so the presence of the two peacocks refers to that moment when the monsoon breaks, and the land is enriched again." [
Guy explained that the earliest versions of the divine female were called Yakshis and known as protective nature spirits, yet this statue is identified as Lakshmi. "This particular figure stands on two lotus leaves emerging from a large pot of water, which represents abundance. On the reverse side of the sculpture, about two-thirds of the way up, you'll see two peacocks perched at the center. All this imagery and symbolism underscores the generative power of water. To have that depiction associated with the Sri Lakshmi would be an explicit nod to her fundamental role in nurturing the world."
Right next to the extraordinary statue was also a relief of Lakshmi in another pose. Further down in the exhibit was the small but powerful statue that is sometimes called Lakshmi of Pompeii.
Lakshmi touched my heart deeply and profoundly. She came alive in that statue and I was able to learn a completely new aspect of her being and what she brings to the world. At 3000 years young, she was like a powerful mother who had come from India to bless us and visit us right in the middle of New York City. In the middle of this secular museum rose an undeniable spiritual energy. It was healing and hopeful.
- Laurie Sue Brockway
