Buddhist monks and nuns gather around a cluster of sculptures in the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London, sprinkling them with water dispersed with lotus leaves, chanting and bowing to the artefacts. It's an unusual ceremony for this venue but this is no ordinary occasion.
These monastics flown in from Hong Kong are taking part in the opening of a new permanent gallery dedicated to Buddhist sculpture - the first of its kind in Britain and one of the largest in the world.
Also at the opening is British sculptor Antony Gormley, who tells the audience that what they are about to see is 'an art that is not about playing a part in a drama' - as western sculptures of the likes of Greek hero Theseus often suggest - 'but about being'.
On show are close to 50 fine depictions of the Buddha, all of them drawn from the museum's Asian collections; more than half have never been seen or have not been on show for decades because of a lack of space.
'The new displays combine some of the museum's most aesthetically important pieces,' says John Clarke, the gallery's curator. 'Virtually every one of these objects is of the highest significance in the study of Buddhist sculpture.'
Highlights include the head of a Buddha statue from Afghanistan, crafted in the fourth century, that has European features and in a style that betrays deep Greek influences. There are also sculptures with Chinese features, and Thai, Burmese and Indonesian art that hold a prominent place in this rare collection, which spans from the second century AD to the 19th century.