Miniature Stone Reliquary or Toilette Casket (1–100 CE): Art, History and Details

Miniature Stone Reliquary or Toilette Casket (1–100 CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Tiny reliquaries holding the cremated remains of the Buddha or a high-ranking holy person empowered monuments and made them sacred. A Buddhist monument, such as the solid hemispherical mounds called stupas, would not be worshipped until it was consecrated with the relic secreted inside. Bits of ash were combined with tiny gems inside a crystal or glass reliquary, which was then placed inside a stone or metal container, like the lidded versions seen here. These containers look like cosmetic vessels for aromatic pastes used for perfume in ancient India. Buddhist texts state that the enlightened Buddha emitted a fragrance like sandalwood paste; the form of the reliquary as a perfume bottle indicates the presence of the Buddha by the visual reference to his pleasant scent. Once enclosed in the stupa the reliquaries would not be seen, but monks were tasked with applying sandalwood paste to the exterior of stupas as part of their regular maintenance to convey to visitors the ongoing presence of the Buddha radiating from the relic in the center.

Object facts

• Title: Miniature Stone Reliquary or Toilette Casket
• Date: 1–100 CE
• Culture: Pakistan, Gandhara, probably Sirkap, early Kushan period
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: gray schist
• Dimensions: Diameter: 4 cm (1 9/16 in.); Overall: 4.2 cm (1 5/8 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art - Kushan, Gandhara
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1977.64

A detail from the museum

The knob of the lid is gilded, as is the interior of the casket.

Collection credit

Bequest of Elizabeth B. Blossom

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1977.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 65, no. 1, 1978, pp. 2–43.
• Czuma, Stanislaw J., and Rekha Morris. Kushan Sculpture: Images from Early India. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1985.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.