INDIA, UTTAR PRADESH, 8TH/9TH CENTURY

This pillar bracket would have flanked the doorway of a sanctum, with the two river goddesses Ganga and Yamuna on opposite sides. The worshipper, upon seeing the goddess, was purified and blessed with a fruitful life. The deity is exemplary in her sinuous tribhanga pose, executed with great refinement, symbolizing earthly abundance with joyful voluptuousness. The sinuous curves of the figures complement one another, as if alluding to the rippling surface of a river. The specific identity cannot be determined due to the lack of her mount, but the waterpot identifies her as a personification of one of the holy rivers. The waterpot, issuing foliage and topped with a coconut, stands as a symbol of fecundity, her life-giving aspects further emphasized by her voluptuous forms and the female attendant holding a piece of fruit. Her face is sensitively carved with full lips and cordlike arched brows, and the skin beneath her breasts is defined by parallel lines as is characteristic of eighth- and ninth-century female images in northwestern Madhya Pradesh and southern Uttar Pradesh. Stylistically the sculpture is very closely related to a pillar bracket of a Celestial Woman in the Berthe and John Ford Collection, Baltimore, attributable to the same hand or workshop, see Gods, Guardians, and Lovers, op. cit., cat. no. 41.

See illustrations on frontispiece and back cover