Beliefs

The Hindu deity Vishnu, 1100–1200. India or Bangladesh; northern Bengal. Phyllite. The Avery Brundage Collection, B62S4+.

The first record of tea drinking in Japan occurs early in the Heian period (794–1185) whenit was introduced to the Japanese aristocracy by scholar-monks returning from Tang dynasty China. Learn more.

New Delhi-based artist Jagannath Panda lives in the burgeoning city of Gurgaon, which is one of India’s major outsourcing hubs and bases of operation for global corporations. His works illustrate the city’s tensions, as overdevelopment threatens natural habitats and infrastructures collapse before they are completed. Panda’s mix of mythology and realism points to the evolving nature of Indian identity and experience today.

Students are introduced to the Ramayana (Story of Rama) and recall events by sequencing related art objects on a Story Hill. Then students make connections between artistic and literary depictions of character by comparing Vishnu and Ravana.

Students express the Balinese concept of working together to create a community by applying the kecak musical pattern of interlocking parts to “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and design their own chant using words or sounds to represent their characters.

Beginning in the Eastern Zhou dynasty (ca. 1071‒ 221 BCE) was the development of the so-called ‘hundred schools’ of philosophy, a creative flowering of genius that laid the foundations for all major schools of Chinese thought with the exception of Buddhism. At this time, philosophers began to travel around from court to court offering advice on everything from how to run the state, how to achieve victory in battle and how to achieve immortality.

Professor Robert Sharf, University of California, Berkeley, discusses Japanese Buddhism at the Medieval Japan Teacher Institute at the Asian Art Museum.

View the whole series of religious arts in South Asia.

Asian Art Museum Storyteller, Liz Nichols, tells a Japanese story about Amaterasu, the sun goddess, in the museum’s Japan galleries.