219. Dish, Silver,
Diameter 9.8 cm, 10th Century.

 

 

The splendid bodhisattva shown in the reference work of Jean Boisselier (1963, plate 50) was transferred to the Mallon collection at the beginning of the twentieth century, then exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, then the Museum for Volkerkunde in Berlin, and finally given by the Baron von der Heydt (1882-1963) to the Museum Rietberg in Zurich (Treasures from the Museum Rietberg 1980, p.69). It is one of Cham art’s best ambassadors and does not deprive Vietnamese collections, which possess its double. By the same token, the kut shown (p.198), also illustrated in Boisselier’s book (1963, plate 247), was part of a cemetery near Phan Ri and was given by former President of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, to his special diplomatic envoy in 1962. It is the only kut in private hands, known outside the frontiers of Vietnam, which here again possesses numerous others. All of these pieces are not just survivors of history, but play a fundamental role in the explanation and promotion of an art that, without them, would be visible only in Vietnamese museums, by definition distant from the majority of the world’s population, nonetheless avid for available knowledge.