Main Record
- Accession Number
- 1978/2.127
- Title
- Standing Parvati
- Artist Nationality
- Indian
- Medium and Support
- bronze
- Object Creation Date
- 15th c - 16th c
- Object Creation Place
- Asia (continent)
- India (nation)
- Tamil Nadu (state)
- Pudukottai (inhabited place)
- Style/Group/Movement
- South Indian bronze
- Dimensions
- 37.7 cm x 11 cm x 9.5 cm (14 13/16 in. x 4 5/16 in. x 3 3/4 in.)
- Century
- 15th-16th century
- Primary Object Classification and Primary Object Type
-
Sculpturefigure
- Secondary Object Classification and Secondary Object Type
-
Ritual Objectsfigure
- Physical Description
- Parvati stands on a tiny base with little feet in a strict unbending stance. The body is elongated with a small waist, the hips billowing out and tapering in a stylized way to the feet. He has broad shoulders, pointy breasts that fall quite low in the chest and has two arms holding a bowl in her right one and a lotus flower in her left. She wears a d simple tight fitting skirt decorated with incised lines and a corded belt that falls down the center of her body with five rows of cords falling from the center and wrapping around her legs creating a fishbone pattern. She wears necklaces with added pendants on her shoulders and her coiffure is tied in a chignon on the right side at the back of her head wearing a headdress that has decorations that cascade down both shoulders. Like the accompanying Shiva figure she has large eyes and what appear to be two sets of eyebrows, but the tikka on her forehead is of a flame shape.
- Subject Matter
- Unlike the elegant and courtly figures of Shiva and Parvati produced in northeast India six centuries earlier (also on view in the exhibition), these two figures bristle with a fierce energy. The style seen here is unique to the region of Pudukottai in Tamil Nadu, in the far south of the subcontinent. There are many such guardian figures with sword and shield found throughout the south in both metal and terracotta; this pair can be identified as Shiva and Parvati by Parvati’s small cup, probably a kapala or skull cup, which refers to Shaivite ascetic practices.
- 1978/2.116 the Shiva and 1978/2.127 the Parvati are a pair
- Primary Keywords
- hindu
- hinduism
- named gods and goddesses
