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Railing Pillar with a Yakshi (Female Nature Divinity)
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
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.
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit lineRailing Pillar with a Yakshi (Female Nature Divinity), c. 125–50 CE. Northern India, Mathura, Kushan period. Red sandstone; overall: 70.5 x 17.5 cm (27 3/4 x 6 7/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund, 1965.250