Starring role for snakes in Ancient India exhibition

Head of a grimacing yaksha © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Daniel Nelson

Snakes rarely get a good press, but they almost steal the show in the British Museum’s exhibition, Ancient India: living traditions.

They are the subjects or integral parts of some of the most striking of the show’s 180 works. This is hardly surprising, given that snakes were presumably abundant in South Asia when Jainism, Hinduism and Buddhism emerged and were incorporated into the symbolism of the three religions..

The exhibition is a magnificent display of art of the three religions, including 2,000-year-old sculptures, paintings, drawings, and manuscripts, and the oldest datable depiction of the Buddha in human form.

There’s much beauty and skill, but relatively little information. I would like to have been told more about the communities that took up these religions, or rejected them; how much they have changed; the changing focus on women; why Hinduism and Buddhism spread but Jainism didn’t travel well: was it a matter of timing and trade?Was it that Jain tenets were too rigorous to be popular (“not using animal-derived paint and materials throughout this exhibition has been an important consideration”)?.

The trio of religions are part of the lives of an estimated two billion people today. An interesting signs of the times, in the midst of controversies about ownership and return of museum objects, is the care taken by the curators to assign provenance and the involvement of community advisory panels, one member of which comments: “It is not possible to teach art history any more without reflecting on the provenances of the objects we touch and research about.”

* Ancient India: Living Traditions, £22 with various reductions available, is at the British Museum, Great Russell Street WC1B 3DG until 19 October. Info: British Museum