VALLÉE DE SWAT, VIIE-VIIIE SIÈCLE

The propitiated worship of Tara, the Buddhist goddess of compassion, appears in the smoothed surfaces of this sculpture. Less commonly represented within the pantheon of Buddhist deities of the period, the deity sits upright with crossed legs on a single lotus base. She is ornamented as a royal divinity, wearing a beaded crown, large double drum earrings, layers of necklaces, cuff bands, and a decorated dhoti cinched along her waist. Her fleshy face, torso, hands, feet, and smoothed lotus leaves retain earlier blended styles distinctly of Swat Valley, influenced by Gandharan and Gupta idioms, while the tightened waist and abstracted pattern along the dhoti capture the antecedents that developed in later Kashmir sculpture.

During the seventh and eighth centuries, intersecting styles blended along trade routes in Swat held between the former strength of the Gandharan and Gupta empires and the rising power of the Western Himalayans in Kashmir, Gilgit, Baltistan, and Western Tibet. Tara shares features seen in an Avalokiteshvara from Swat Valley which retains late Gandharan style and similarly modeled lotus base with layered petals (The Metropolitan Museum of Art; 2012.247). The stockier proportions and the folded legs that angle forward are more characteristically Indian and resemble a Swat Valley Akshobya (The Metropolitan Museum of Art; 1985.77). The stippled dhoti and cinched waist may find earlier influences from Central Asian over several historical periods, and these features would later come to define Kashmir and eventually Western Tibetan art. Two other Swat Valley examples share characteristics with this Tara; a Maitreya depicts a similarly incised pattern along the dhoti and a Tara illustrates the same girdled waist and looped necklace (U. von Schroeder, Indo-Tibetan Bronzes, Hong Kong, 1981, p. 85, 6C and p. 97, no. 12G).