How to Read Buddhist Art

$29.95 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

By Kurt Behrendt Intended to inspire the devout and provide a focus for religious practice, Buddhist artworks stand at the center of a belief system that swept across Asia during the first millennia. How to Read Buddhist Art assembles 54 masterpieces from The Met collection dating from the 1st century BCE to the present and including seminal works from early reliquaries to sublime images of Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and powerful tantric deities. These sacred objects—created in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the…