A Yakshi Bust from Bharhut

Author(s): Ananda Coomaraswamy

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Vol. 29, No. 175 (Oct., 1931), pp. 81-83
Published by: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4170332 .
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BULLETIN OF THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS XXIX, 81
Basing his process on Newton's theory of three
primary colors, J. C. Le Blon was the first to
demonstrate that engravings in color could be pro-
duced by printing from more than one plate. Filled
with enthusiasm, Le Blon hoped to turn his discovery
into a profitable enterprise. Twice between 1 720
and 1736 he found capital in England to launch
his project and twice he failed ingloriously. The
second time he had to take to his heels and flee
precipitately to the Continent. He still kept his
optimism, but had difficulty in finding fresh backers,
for his scheme entailed a heavy outlay. When
he died in 1741 he was attempting to apply his
invention to the production of anatomical plates.
Horace Walpole wrote of him at first hand that
he was " of surprising vivacity and volubility and
with a head admirably mechanic, but a universal
projector and with at least one of the qualities that
attend that vocation, either a dupe or a cheat; I
think the former, although as most of his projects
ended in the air, the sufferers believed the latter.
As he was much of an enthusiast, perhaps, like
most enthusiasts, he was both one and the other."
It is now believed that Le Blon did not do the
mezzotinting of his plates himself, but that his share
was to supply the drawing. In our example of
St. Catherine after Correggio, one of the most
successful of his essays, three plates were used.
Reddish flesh tones predominate and the line work
in the hair is not so marked as in some impressions.
In addition to the works already referred to there
have been purchased within the past half year im-
portant works by Israhel van Meckenem, Amman,
Baldung, Springinklee, Weiditz, Van Dyck, Goya,
and Mary Cassatt. For the ornament collection
more than two thousand prints have been acquired,
by or after Ducerceau, Boulle, Forty, Guyot, J. B.
Huet, de la Joue, Oppenort, Pillement, Charles
Germaine and Augustin de St. Aubin, Vauquer,
and Watteau. H. P. R.
A Yakshi Bust from Bharhut
THE oldest of the three great Indian stiipas with
elaborately decorated stone railings is that of
Bharhut or Barhut, an ancient site in Bundelkhand,
Central India, half-way between Allahabad and
Jabalpur. The railing sculptures from this site,
executed in a hard red sandstone and, apart from
actual fractures, admirably preserved, were long ago
made known by Sir Alexander Cunningham (The
Stupa of Bharhut, 1879), but his work does not
include all the known fragments, is partially out of
date, and has long been out of print. All the
extant sculptures are supposed to have been removed
to the Indian Museum, Calcutta, where they are
now exhibited; but one fragment (published in
Cunningham, P1. LII, upper left), said to have
come from Batanmara (one of several villages near
to Bharhut to which fragments of the railing had
been removed for use as building material), remained
in private possession, and now forms a valued item
in the Ross Collection, antedating by a century the
the torso from Sdaci.'
Like the S&iici torso, the Bharhut sculpture is a
part of a figure of a Yak6i,2 who must have stood
under a tree, with right arm raised to grasp its
branches. From Cunningham's illustration already
mentioned, and P1. XXIX, Fig. 5, and the India
Office photograph, serial 1041 ,record XX a,225 1,
it is known that at least seven smaller fragments be-
longing to the Museum bust were once extant. With
the aid of these fragments and by comparison with
the complete Yaksi reliefs known from Bharhut,
an admirable restoration has been made by Mr.
Shunichiro Tomita: there existed ample material
for the proper right arm and hand, stomach and
thigh, and for the completion of the hair, but the
position of the left arm was taken from other
examples. The accompanying small cut reproduces
another, previously unpublished hand and part of a
sdla tree, which is very like Cunningham's P1.
XXIX, 5, and might with equal probability have
belonged to the Museum figure. The Yaksi must
have stood upon some "vehicle", but in the absence
of any remains nothing more is suggested than the
fact of there having been some support for the feet.
The flowering sala tree (Vatica or Shorea
robusta), developed from Cunningham's fragment,
P1. XXIX, Fig. 5, gives to our Yaksi in a more
than usually literal sense a right to the designation
sulabhanjikd,3 a term originally connected with
the Indian fertility festival of " plucking sal-flowers"
and applied in architectural terminology to all
figures of the " woman and tree" type.
The sculptures of Bharhut are by no means
uniform in technical accomplishment, but range
between two extremes: the first, older in type
(though it is probable that all the work is approxi-
mately of one and the same date, ca. 150 B. C.),
exhibits forms much compressed between the two
planes of the relief, sharply silhouetted with but
little rounding of the contours, and with a tendency
to rigidity and strain in the pose; the second, illus-
trated by the present example, in higher relief with
the contours graciously modelled, a true feeling for
the texture of flesh, and a freer and more natural
movement. All this partially anticipates the more
sensitive and sensuous treatment at Snfici, but there
survives at Bharhut a primitive naivete that adds
a certain wistfulness to the otherwise rich and
voluptuous ideal of physical beauty.
At Bharhut we are not more than a century
removed from the beginnings of Indian sculpture in
hard stone. But nearly all the sculpture of the
early Indian school has a markedly and unmistak-
ably Indian character, and no one has doubted
that it represents a translation into stone of a long
antecedent series of sculptures in wood, ivory or
other materials less enduring than stone. It is
'Described in M F. A. Bulletin, No. 164.
2For fuller details regarding the Yakshi type and its significance see
M. F. A. Bulletin, No. 164, A Yaksi Torso from Sanchi; and my
Yaksas, Pts. I, 11, 1928, 1931.
3Vogel, J. Ph., The woman and free, or salabhanjika, in Indian
literature and art, Acta Orientalia, Vol. VIl; and my Yaksas, 11, p. 12.
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XXIX, 82 BULLETIN OF THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS
QYiB
ru rsr
Yakshi, Bharhul,
restored
plausible to connect the appearance of sculpture in
hard stone with the discovery of steel, which was
known as early as the second century B. C., and
may not have been known before the third when
the sculptures in hard stone are first met with.
Apart from serious damage to the nose, the face
is well preserved. The hair is parted, and then
curling,
1
is twisted into a heavy braid, interwoven
with sala-flowers or sala-flowered muslin, falling
Ie~
Another Fiagment from Bharhut
over the left shoulder to the hips. A long, heavy
ribbon, perhaps of flexible gold work, is laid loosely
over the hair, crossing on the left side. The eye-
brows are shown as arched ridges; the eyes are
large, with ends somewhat extended by a wedge-
shaped mark towards the ears. The mouth is
slightly drawn down at the sides. Tattoo marks
are shown in low relief as follows: two lines and
an elephant goad on each cheek, three dots and a
stroke on the left cheek, two dots between the
brows; small flowers on the left breast and right
shoulder; and it is probable that the wedge-shaped
elongation of the eyes, being in relief and not a
direct continuation of the lids, is also to be under-
stood as tattooed.1 A twelve-petalled flower, or
star or sun, probably of thin gold repousse, is worn
on the forehead. The sala-flower spray emerging
from the hair and resting on the left cheek represents
probably a fresh flower spray worn on the ear.
Heavy earrings, consisting of a cube and thick spiral,
distend the lobes of the ears. A necklace of four
strings of graduated beads, probably pearls, with
larger, hexagonal central beads, probably represent-
ing emeralds, hangs round the neck; and hanging
lower, a chain of twisted gold supports an elaborate
pendant ending in a pair of inverted ratnatraya
ornaments. A flexible golden band passes over
the right shoulder, under the necklaces, across the
stomach, and so round the left thigh, and would be
seen at the back in real life. The hand fragment
(Cunningham, XXIX, 5) shows bracelets and
spiral fingerrings; and it may be taken for granted
that anklets were worn. The only garment is a
muslin dhoti, the folds of which appear on one of
the fragments, extending from the waist to below
the knee; but none of this appears in the Museum
fragment, which shows the flesh folds of the waist
(accidentally omitted in the restoration), but does
not include the navel. Round the hips and over
the dhoti there is a heavy mekhala of square
and round linked beads, and a double chain of
circular beads; and over these is knotted a flowered
sash decorated with vajra-like ornaments and six-
petalled flowers, ending in long fringes, falling
below the knees.
'In the description following. account is taken of the details afforded
by the missing fragments, as embodied in the restoration.
'A similar tattoo mark beside the eye will be found in Luard, C. E.,
Tattooing in Central India, Indian Antiquary, Vol. XXXIII, P1. XX.
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BULLETIN OF THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS XXIX, 83
Bust of a Yakshi, Bharhut
Ross Collection Ca. 150 B. C.
The present fragment measures nearly twenty
inches in height, eleven and a quarter in width,
and six in thickness. It must have formed part of
the face of a corner railing pillar, originally seven
feet one inch in height by one foot ten and a half
square in cross-section; the six inches preserved
represent almost the whole depth of the relief, but
no part of the plane background, on which there
may have been an inscription giving the Yaksi's
name, survives. ANANDA COOMARASWAMY.
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