Explore the early development of Indian art, from the artefacts of the Indus Valley to the Hindu and Buddhist sculpture of north India and Gandhara.
Large moulded tiles of this type formed the risers to a bench at one end of the courtyard of a Buddhist monastery at Harwan near Srinagar (now destroyed). Their iconography is enigmatic, with a row of conversing heads at top; central figures of long-haired ascetics (probably not Buddhist, but of some other sect such as the Ajivikas); and ducks and lotuses below. This tile is numbered 32 in kharoshthi script.
Harle, J. C., and Andrew Topsfield, Indian Art in the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 1987), no. 27 on p. 21, p. xiv, illus. p. 21
Harle, J. C., Gupta Sculpture: Indian sculpture of the Fourth to the Sixth Centuries A.D. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), illus. 57, Pl.144
Ahuja, Naman, ‘Early Indian Art at the Ashmolean Museum - Catalogue in progress’, 2016, no. 61.4
Objects are sometimes moved to a different location. Our object location data is usually updated on a monthly basis. Contact the Jameel Study Centre if you are planning to visit the museum to see a particular object on display, or would like to arrange an appointment to see an object in our reserve collections.
Objects may have since been removed or replaced from a gallery. Click into an individual object record to confirm whether or not an object is currently on display. Our object location data is usually updated on a monthly basis, so contact the Jameel Study Centre if you are planning to visit the museum to see a particular Eastern Art object.
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