Mainimati Museum

Bangladesh


The small Mainimati Museum, adjacent to Salban Vihara, is worth a diversion. The collection includes terracotta plaques, bronze statues, 4th-century silver and gold coins, jewellery, kitchen utensils and votive stupas embossed with Buddhist inscriptions. The marvellous terracotta plaques reveal a rural Buddhist art alive with animation and vivid natural realism.

Also on display is an unusually large bronze bell from one of the Buddhist temples and some 1000-year-old large, well-preserved black-stone carvings of Hindu gods and goddesses, including Vishnu, Ganesh and Parvati.


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