Image: Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow
The exhibition 'The Diamond Vehicle. Buddhist Art of Russia' presents the Tibetan Medical Atlas as one of the principal sacred objects of Buryatia and Russian Buddhism. The object can be seen at the exhibition in the museum’s Main Building until 1 November.
The exhibited Atlas is a late-19th-century copy of a 17th-century original. The complete 17th-century original consisted of 79 sheets, while the version in the collection of the National Museum of the Republic of Buryatia contains 76 sheets and is the most complete surviving copy of the original Atlas.
Thirty sheets in the Atlas are devoted specifically to medical subjects. They show human anatomy, the phases of embryonic development in the womb, diagrams of bloodletting, cauterization and acupuncture, and medicines of plant, animal and mineral origin.
The exhibition is a joint project with the Museum of the East and museums in Buryatia, Tuva and Kalmykia, and is timed to coincide with the Year of the Unity of the Peoples of Russia. Buryat, Tuvan and Kalmyk Buddhist art is shown alongside Mongolian, Tibetan, Chinese and ancient Nepalese schools, placing Russian Buddhist art within the wider context of Vajrayana, or the art of the Diamond Vehicle.
