The wide world of Asian art — encompassing everything from Japanese swords to porcelain snuff bottles to contemporary Indian painting — is on view at the auction houses now for a week of major sales. The auctions offer a grand tour of the world’s oldest cultures, but the catchall notion of the week is a bit unfair to the disparate cultures that are showcased. Cramming just about all of recorded human history into a few auctions creates some odd juxtapositions. Nonetheless, there are some overarching themes. The first is the importance of Buddhist religious art.

Christie’s is selling a collection of Gandharan Buddhist art from the collection of an Indian prince. These pieces come from the second and third centuries when craftsmen in the foothills of the Himalayas fed off the wealth of the Silk Road and were influenced by a confluence of Eastern and Western styles. The result is a naturalistic style that was heavily influenced by Greek sculpture, so much so that the figures are wearing Greek robes. The centerpiece of the prince’s collection is an arched relief carved with scenes from Buddha’s life arranged in registers. It would have been used to adorn a memorial or grave marker and is now estimated at between $200,000 and $300,000. Sotheby’s is offering something from a slightly later period — just 1,000 years down the line — a Tibetan gilt Maitreya, or the Buddha of the Future, set with semiprecious stones, which is estimated at $3.5 million. But in both sales, the real revelation is the quality and range of Indian, Nepalese, and Tibetan arts.

The same can be said of Chinese porcelains and jades, though the emphasis is less on artistic expression than on pure craft: The highly disciplined Chinese craftsmen took hundreds of years to work out the best way to carve butterflies or pine trees and then stuck with it. Both auction houses have a wide range of intricately carved jades, finely detailed bronzes, gilt statues, and an endless array of porcelains. Size is not an indication of value here. Chinese snuff bottles that fit in the palm of a hand are valued between $400,000 and $600,000. They’re so valuable that they have their own sale.

The overwhelming variety of Chinese crafts makes it difficult to go into detail, but the exhibitions from the 14th to 17th centuries make for a good primer. Christie’s jade water buffalo, estimated at between $200,000 and $300,000, is one particular standout. Carved from a single piece of jade, this is a deceptive piece because the artistry is finding the figure in the jade.

Japanese artistry is also on display at Christie’s, where there is a sale of Japanese and Korean art. The sale covers a range of artistic achievement, with everything from contemporary Korean painting, including Lee Ufan’s 1987 canvas “With Winds,” estimated at between $400,000 and $600,000, to an 18th century Japanese screen by Maruyama Okyo, estimated at between $300,00 and $400,000. The Japanese martial and theatrical traditions are emphasized by Noh theater costumes and masks, as well as suits of armor and swords.

The last stop on this world tour is the most conventionally artistic, if not the best known. Chinese contemporary art has become a passion for collectors in America and around the globe. Sotheby’s will hold a sale of contemporary Chinese, Japanese, and Korean painting on September 20, but Christie’s and Phillips de Pury include the Chinese painters in their main contemporary sales. Both houses also have sales of contemporary Indian and South Asian painting, a genre in which the reflections of many 20th century styles and artists — from Picasso to Warhol — are expressed in a distinctively South Asian way. But all of this painting is fresh — and valuable.

Tyeb Mehta’s “Mahishasura” (1996) is estimated at between $750,000 and $1,200,000. Other eye-opening artists with five- and six-figure pictures are Chintan Upadhyay, Maqbool Fida Husain, Francis Newton Souza, Atul Dodiya, and Syed Haider Raza.

As the art market continues its rapid global expansion — one that will no doubt be tested in the uneasy market conditions ahead — Asia Week proves that the world has a great deal to offer.