I'm in the Asia Gallery at the back of the British Museum. Behind me stand two statues of the judges of the Chinese underworld, recording the good and the bad deeds of those who had died. 大英博物馆北区的亚洲厅摆放宥两尊中国阴间的判...
055：EPISODE 55 - Chinese Tang tomb figures唐代墓葬俑 Tang tomb figures (made around 728 AD). Earthenware sculpture, from China It's a sure sign of middle age they say if, when you pick up the newspaper, you turn first to the obituaries. 据说，...
Unfortunately, nothing is known about how or when the statue was later found, nor how it came to be owned by the then Governor of Ceylon, the soldier Sir Robert Brownrigg, who brought Tara to Britain. Ceylon had been taken over by the British from it...
Nira Wickramasinghe, professor in history and international relations, spoke to us about what this long-established pattern means for the region today: 荷兰莱顿大学从事历史与国际关系研究的尼拉维克拉马辛格教授为我们阐释了...
We don't know who paid for Tara to be made. It could have been the ruler of any one of several kingdoms that squabbled and fought over territory in Sri Lanka around 800 AD. Whoever it was clearly wanted her help on the path to salvation. But in Sri L...
Tara probably stood inside a temple, and there must have been a matching sculpture of her male consort, Avalokiteshvara, nearby, but his image has not survived. 这尊度母像当年很可能立于某座庙宇内，起初身边一定还有与她相配的...
The new faith spread rapidly along the trade routes of India. So that when this sculpture of Tara was made around 800 AD, Sri Lanka had been predominantly Buddhist for over a thousand years. The particular strand of Buddhism that flourished in Sri La...
But this statue was absolutely not made to titillate. She is a religious being, one of the spiritual protectors to whom the Buddhist faithful can turn in distress, and from a religious tradition that has no difficulty at all in happily combining divi...
The statue of Tara is cast in one piece of solid bronze, that has been covered in gold. When new, she must have been dazzling when she was seen under the Sri Lankan sun. And even now, when her gilding is rather worn, and she stands in the cool light...
For the Maya, blood-letting was an ancient tradition, and it marked all the major points of Maya life - especially the path to royal and sacred power. In the sixteenth century, 800 years after this lintel was carved, and long after the Maya civilisat...
