Gandhara art inspires legends

Besides Buddhist artifacts, the exhibition also shows some everyday objects related to people's ordinary lives. For example, there is a gold earring in the shape of a leech. The bent leech forms a moon-like ring. Linking the ring is a smaller moving ring which connects to a flower bud-shaped pendicle on the other side.

"From this earring we are amazed at how sophisticated and developed their handicrafts were," Luo says.

Some Gandhara artifacts traveled to China in two ways. One route, passing through what is today's Xinjiang and Gansu, is well-known, but the other, ascending the Indus Valley into the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, is less well-known, Luo adds.

A copper statue of the Guanyin Bodhisattva on display at the Palace Museum has Tibetan inscriptions on its lotus-shaped pedestal. It was produced in Swat in the 7th to 8th century. "It shows that Tibetans got Buddhist statues from Gandhara, and put them in their temples to worship," Luo says.

Another Tibet-made copper statue dating from the 11th century of Manjusri, the bodhisattva personifying supreme wisdom, shows stylistic borrowing from images made in Swat, Gilgit and other places in the region.