In June 2021, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York had just reopened after the first wave of the pandemic, I had the opportunity to visit and inspect a very special new arrival: the Year Five Buddha Triad (CKI 232), which had been been sold at auction at Christie’s the year before and is now on loan to the Museum.

The donative inscription on its base is notable for providing the only attestation in Gandhāra of the Buddhist title trepiḍaga “knowing the three baskets (of the teaching),” i.e., a master of the entire Buddhist canon. When I was in New York again in March 2022, I was very kindly invited to serve as respondent to Juhyung Rhi, who was delivering the Annual Distinguished Lecture on the Arts of South and Southeast Asia to a packed auditorium, in the first event of this scale hosted at the Museum since its reopening. The following is a recording of the lecture, with my remarks on the epigraphy of the Buddha Triad starting at 59:35: