The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of March 29, 2024

Railing Pillar with a Yakshi (Female Nature Divinity)

Railing Pillar with a Yakshi (Female Nature Divinity)

c. 125–50 CE

Did You Know?

Flowers of the ashoka tree (saraca asoca) are bright red.

Description

This pillar would have been an upright of a stair banister, probably leading to an upper circumambulatory path of a Buddhist or Jain sacred monument known as a stupa. It has the image of a nature divinity grasping the branch of an ashoka tree with one hand and touching her breast full of nourishing milk with the other. The reverse side of the pillar is decorated with a stupa at the top and a partially damaged scene set in the architectural framework below.
  • ?–1965
    (Frank Caro [1904–1980], New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)
    1965–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • “Art of Asia Recently Acquired by American Museums, 1965.” Archives of Asian Art, vol. 20, 1966, pp. 84–113. Mentioned and Reproduced: fig. 10, p. 87 20110986
    La chronique des arts, 1966, no. 154. Reproduced: p. 38
    Czuma, Stanislaw. “Mathura Sculpture in the Cleveland Museum Collection.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 64, no. 3, 1977, pp. 83–114. Mentioned and Reproduced: p. 92, figs. 16 and 17 25152680
    Carter, Martha L. “The Bacchants of Mathura: New Evidence of Dionysiac Yaksha Imagery from Kushan Mathura.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 69, no. 8, 1982, pp. 247–257. Reprodcued: fig. 9, p. 252 25159785
    Czuma, Stanislaw J., and Rekha Morris. Kushan Sculpture: Images from Early India. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1985. Mentioned and Reproduced: cat. no. 33, p. 97
  • Kushan Sculpture: Images from Early India. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 13, 1985-January 5, 1986).
    Year in Review: 1965. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 27-November 14, 1965).
  • {{cite web|title=Railing Pillar with a Yakshi (Female Nature Divinity)|url=false|author=|year=c. 125–50 CE|access-date=29 March 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1965.250