Studies in Indian Art c11.s5.7

c11.s5.7

From this known attribute on the images from Sarnath we now proceed to a group of statuettes from Mathura in which we find a two-armed female figure standing with the right hand in *abhayamudrā*. In her left hand she holds a lotus parasol. For all practical purposes the female figure is identical with the well known Gaja-Lakṣmī or Nāgī figures from Mathura, but without the elephants or the serpent hoods. The typical standing female figure with left hand akimbo is also known to us from the coins of Mathura and some of the tribal coins. In the early centuries of the Christian era there seems to have been a recognised type of female figure which was employed with certain minor changes to represent the iconographic forms of the different goddesses, such as Lakṣmī, Hārītī, Nāgī etc. It is this form that constantly recurs in the numerous female statuettes of the Kuṣāṇa period discovered at Mathura. The two-armed female figure with a pair of vases and right hand in *abhayamudrā* is certainly of divine rank, and the vases appear as her distinguishing symbol.