THE 10TH-century, 22-inch sandstone torso of Uma, which sold at Christie’s in March for $77,675, needed no arms or feet to be a satisfying work of art.

Acclaim Ascendant
More recently, Hollywood’s infatuation with all things Buddhist (Richard Gere, Steven Segall and others are reportedly passionate collectors of Himalayan art) has added a touch of glamour to an already burgeoning field. Prices are rising quickly: Robin Dean, head of Indian and Southeast Asian Art at Sotheby’s in New York, recalls that in the early 1990s, the Pan Asian Collection of works that New York investment banker Christian Humann had acquired in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s achieved groundbreaking prices of over $50,000. Ten years later, those prices looked like bargains. In 1990, a 26-inch red sandstone figure of a river goddess from Rajasthan, India, created about the year 800, sold for $68,750; in 2001 it brought $226,000 at Christie’s.

Yet the best works are still significantly undervalued. London dealer John Eskenazi recently sold a rare seventh-century bronze Buddha, a joint purchase between the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, for $1.5 million—near the top of the market in this field. “If it had been a Roman or Greek antiquity, or a piece of contemporary sculpture, the price would have been twice as much,” Eskenazi notes.