Handmade Statue Decorative Object

Features

• This celestial nymph, reproduced here in brass, is obviously one from the clan of gandharvas, although the caster has borrowed elements of beauty and facial features from an apsara and has created his figure by blending the both. The dwarapala statues, flanking the temple doors could be either male or female. The male figures are known as dwarapala while the female as Dwara-devis. The male, almost without exception, stood in tribhanga-mudra, that is, a posture in which a figure had three curves. The female figures had rhythm blended in their form, but it only had some kind of semblance of a dance mode. A lesser evolved temple had the dwarapala or dwara-devi figures flanking on both sides of its doorjambs only towards its lower part, but the more evolved ones had two, three or even more dwarapala pairs, contained in vertically rising recessed niches. The dwarapala figures at the lower end invariably held in their hand standards, which the tradition assigned to the enshrining deity. This standard was substituted by a chanwara often at upper levels but sometimes also at the lower level. The dwara-devis rarely held a chanwara.
• Cast by lost wax technique, this wondrous specimen of brass craftsmanship represents a dwara-devi with her humbly folded hands. As suggests her superhuman form and beauty, she may also be an apsara saluting her patrons before commencing a dance. The pair of peacocks on her shoulders may be an element derived from the folk tradition. Her sharp nose, oval face with an angular chin and round cheeks, small but emotionally charged eyes, well defined eyebrows, glowing forehead, heavy but well shaped neck and ear contours are features characteristically south Indian in their style of rendering. She has on her head an elaborately incised towering crown usually associated with Vaishnava gods and goddesses. She has a tall lean figure with a slender belly and moderate hips. Her beautifully moulded breasts are partially covered by a bhumipata type ornamented lace. Besides a number of ornaments on her neck, she has around her shoulders a sash, which has a brooch like formation of its right end and a flower like on its left.
• This brass-statue represents a winged Naga-kanya, a maiden with a serpent’s lower half. Almost all ancient mythologies world-over comprise the concept of half man-half serpent and half maiden-half serpent, often interacting with the world of man. As regards the cult of man-serpent mixed forms, Indian mythology is far more elaborate though strangely while it talks with definiteness about different serpents and their lineage, about seven-eight of them being major having well defined line, role, personality, lands they ruled or influenced, and their related myths, it is almost conspicuously silent about Naga-kanyas except sometimes as wives of these Nagas or in some minor mythological contexts.