Day 103 - Mirror handle


November 26, 2018

Gallery 237 repays close attention. It contains perhaps 40 small statuettes and other objects that mostly depict Hindu and Buddhist figures, carved  of stone, brass, marble, and other substances,. The statuettes date from the 7th through the 14th centuries and come from Kashmir, Afghanistan, the Swat Valley, Western Tibet, and other areas in the northwestern part of the subcontinent.  

Virtually all the statuettes are elaborately detailed. I smile to myself when I identify successfully an image of Vishnu, recognizable from the heads of his avatars, a lion and a boar, that accompany the god, and an image of Shiva, with his distinctive, multilayered chignon. That said, I'm not always sure whether a crowned figure represents a Hindu god or a Buddha (or bodhisattva)!

One thing that strikes me is the similarity of some iconographic representations across cultures. Donors, for example, are often shown as much smaller figures at the base of the principal figure.  And beside a representation of Kamadeva, the god of love (that one should be easy to remember - think Kama sutra!) is shown a mythical beast that spews arrows. I guess people in different societies have been similarly stuck metaphorically by love's arrows.

Today's object may be the only secular one I see today, and it's among the simpler ones, although by no means simple. Carved from schist, it's identified as a likely mirror handle, perhaps 3 1/2 inches high and 2 inches wide, from 6th or 7th century Kashmir. It depicts a seated woman, her torso turned three-quarters toward us, playing a lute. Her hair is parted in the middle and falls in incised waves on either side of her face; she wears large (and presunably heavy!) hoop earrings, along with bracelets, armbands, and what appears to be a beaded necklace but might be the top of a brassiere-like garment. What really appeals to me is the carving of the human form: the softly rounded cheeks and the chiseled abdomen, whose musculature resembles that of the fitness models in many of my exercise videos. Her left shoulder has a sheen that I would like to think was produced by being repeatedly gripped in the hand of a Kashmiri woman who, in my imagining, held up the mirror to inspect her own coiffure and jewelry.  I think I like this object so much because I can relate so directly to it. It speaks not to gods and goddesses but to the female (or is it "human"! ) concern with appearance through the ages. 

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