British Museum Explores Shared Roots of Three Ancient Indian Religions

“This kind of imagery is now part of day-to-day life,” says the curator Sushma Jansari of the types of objects included in the British Museum’s new exhibition Ancient India: Living Traditions, which presents devotional art of three of India’s great religions: Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. “These are faiths practised by almost two billion people around the world. Our show is about the commonalities, our shared cultural heritage,” she says.

Now distinct in beliefs and culture, all three religions are interlinked, drawing on the same early traditions and texts, though they have developed in different and occasionally conflicting directions since. Hindus are the largest of the groups, making up around 80% of India’s population with close to one billion adherents; there are around 500 million Buddhists globally (mostly in China) and around six million Jains (mostly in India).

Jansari says that, for her, this commonality is expressed most articulately through devotional art that goes back to the ancient roots of the religions, which still finds its way into current ritual and practice—hence the show’s title. “It all originates with the nature spirits of the subcontinent,” she says. “I thought it could be really surprising for people to find deep-rooted commonalities between these different religions, and to highlight how pervasive these nature spirits were.”

Ref: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/