Ellora Style Schist Fragment of a Deity Ellora Style Schist Fragment of a Deity Ellora Style Schist Fragment of a Deity Ellora Style Schist Fragment of a Deity Ellora Style Schist Fragment of a Deity Ellora Style Schist Fragment of a Deity Ellora Style Schist Fragment of a Deity Ellora Style Schist Fragment of a Deity Ellora Style Schist Fragment of a Deity
Ellora Style Schist Fragment of a Deity
Ellora Style Schist Fragment of a Deity
Ellora Style Schist Fragment of a Deity
Ellora Style Schist Fragment of a Deity
Ellora Style Schist Fragment of a Deity
Ellora Style Schist Fragment of a Deity
Ellora Style Schist Fragment of a Deity
Ellora Style Schist Fragment of a Deity
Ellora Style Schist Fragment of a Deity

Ellora Style Schist Fragment of a Deity

SKU: HQ.0139

Origin: Ellora, Maharashtra, India
Circa: 10th Century AD to 11th Century AD
Dimensions: 8.5" Height x 9" Width (21.6 cm x 22.9 cm)
Medium: Schist

A crowned figure (likely Shiva or a royal figure in the guise of) emerges from the broken stone with the composure of a temple deity, carved in a sumptuous gray-black schist and preserved from the waist up. The tall conical headdress (Jata Makuta) rises in tiers of incised spirals above a serene face with high arched brows and downcast, almond eyes. Beaded and petal-form necklaces cover the chest; a sash crosses the torso, and the surviving hand cradles a lotus bloom. A second, smaller figure once flanked the shoulder, suggesting an attendant or subsidiary deity from a larger architectural group. Accordingly we can also see the remains of a hand and forearm cradled around the neck of the main figure indicating to us that he was once embraced by his divine consort.  The combination of the tall crown elaborately bound and coiled with incised locks of matted hair, the depiction of the divine embrace (alingana), and the fact that the figure(s) are composed with the languid posture and fluid curves typical of the divine couple are all strong signs that we are looking at was once a depiction of Uma Maheshvara (Shiva with his divine consort Parvati).  The unique scattered red pigment across the surface of the image is the residue of puja, marking long devotional use in a ritual context. 

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Schoettle Collection, Germany, 1980's. American Private Collection. Arte Primitivo, New York.

Scattered remains of red puja pigment. Scattered losses, missing left arm, rear layer reattached.

The rock-cut and structural temples of the Deccan, above all the Ellora caves in present-day Maharashtra, established a vocabulary of high jatamukuta-like crowns, layered bead-and-petal necklaces, and softly modeled torsos that regional workshops carried through the Rashtrakuta and post-Rashtrakuta centuries. Figures of this type populated the exterior niches and doorway surrounds of temple exteriors, where princely donors, celestial attendants, and minor divinities were carved in the same idiom as the principal icons, distinguished chiefly by attribute and scale. The lotus in the raised hand is not decorative. Held by Vishnu, Surya, Padmapani, Shiva and a range of attendant deities, it functions as a marker of purity and divine emergence, and its presence here argues for a divine rather than purely secular reading of the figure, notwithstanding the princely jewels. The red pigment surviving in the crevices is sindura or kumkum, applied during worship, evidence that the image received offerings rather than serving as mere architectural ornament.

Dr. A. L. Srivastava, Uma-Mahesvara: An Iconographic Study of the Divine Couple, 2004.

Dhavalikar, M. K., Ellora (Monumental Legacy), Oxford University Press, 2005.

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Ellora Style Schist Fragment of a Deity

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