Statue

Features

• In early sculptural traditions, as at Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh or Konark in Orissa, parrot is more often sculpted as striking or titillating with its beak the maidens breasts mistaking it for a fruit, a pomegranate or any, just ripening, for representing her vigorous youth, almost a conventionalised image-form used for portraying a Mugdha-nayika, a maiden in her trans-adolescent age or in early youth. The maiden in this statue has as vigorous youth and ripened breasts as any that chisel and hammer ever sculpted, beyond the stretch of stana-pata breasts-band, to contain, but the stoically poised parrot, unlike a conventional motif or tool used for defining the state of her youth, seems to have been conceived with thematic thrust, perhaps conversing with her. In medieval Indian romanticliterature, as also in her art, especially in early sculptures, parrot has often served as the messenger between lovers. As narrate a number of texts, many of the princesses confining to the palace-four-walls used to have parrots speaking mans tongue and understanding it for carrying their messages to their lovers and bring back theirs.
• One of the earliest texts to be illustrated atMughalEmperor Akbars royal studio, the Tutinama, as well as itsSanskritsource-book Shuk-Sapt-shati, a collection of seven hundred verses on parrots, arebooksfully devoted to parrots, usually their role as messengers. The parrot Hiramana is as significant a character in the great epic Padmavat by Malik Mohammad Jayasi, a mid-sixteenth century Awadhi poet, as any human character in the poem, even Padmavati or Ratna Sen, its heroine and hero. Padmavati, an unparalleled beauty, was the princess of Sinhala Desha a mythical geography with ocean around in far off south sometimes identified as Lanka or present Sri-Lanka . Many suitors reached Sinhala Desha for wedding her but all inferior none won her hand. Padmavati had a parrot, named Hiramana, that knew a number of languages and was a holy soul. One day, when it came back after a pilgrimage it had gone along a group of pilgrims, the parrot narrated to Padmavati how it had a chance to reach the terrace of Prince Ratna Sen, the king of Mewar and see the unsurpassed beauty of the prince.
• 17.7 INCH HEIGHT X 7.3 INCH WIDTH X 5 INCH DEPTH, 10.20 kg