Studies in Indian Art c11.s5.10

c11.s5.10

In one specimen [No. 748] the *abhaya* pose and the fish symbol with the *padmātapatra* occur but the *ratna-ghaṭas* are wanting. It most likely points to an earlier transitional stage when the symbol of the treasure-vases had not come into vogue. And this brings us to a third group of figures consisting only of terracottas in which the fish symbol alone is found associated with the standing female figure whose left hand is placed on the girdle and the right hand holds a string with a pair of fish suspended from its ends. A typical specimen [Mathura Museum, No. 2243] is illustrated in the Mathura Museum Handbook (second edition), Plate VII, Fig. 14¹. Stylistically the figure is related to the Yakshī figures from Bharhut and Bodhgaya, and the conspicuous headdress, heavy earrings, full broad face and the narrow junction of the breasts and waist point to its being a product of the Sunga period. Here the auspicious jewel-vases find no place, and the iconographic conception with *mīna-mithuna* appears to be insulating itself from the vague and general belief in a Mother Goddess who was the precursor of the later classical goddesses. The fish symbol associated with waters, which is the birthplace of the *nidhis* or mythical riches, is much more elemental in conception than the treasure-vases. We do not yet precisely know the significance of the fish symbol in relation to these female figures from Mathura. But working back from the known figures of the Kushāṇa period in which both the *ratna-ghaṭa* and the *mīna-mithuna* occur side by side in one and the same figures, to terracotta figurines with only the fish emblem, we at least find some common links which may tentatively serve as pointers in the direction of identifying these early figurines of the Sunga period. Whether in the religious upheaval accompanying the early Indian art of Bharhutt, Sanchi and Mathura of the Sunga period, the conception of Vasudhārā had been developed and grasped we have no obvious means of determining. The few Mathura figurines are our only source at present.