Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c16.64

c16.64

The loss due to aesthetic decadence was somewhat made up by the emergence of figures of iconographic interest which begin to be made first in the Kuṣāṇa period; e.g. Nāgī, Kubera, Hārītī, Vasudhārā, etc. found at Mathurā. [Figs. 242-5]. At Ahichchhatrā the most characteristic Kuṣāṇa type is that of a nude dwarf (*vāmanaka*) comprising about a hundred specimens and showing a bandy-legged figure with hands on breast or arms akimbo, and standing with knees apart but feet joined. [Fig. 246]. Linked to it were other sub-types and grotesque figures,³ all of wide distribution from Rājghāt to Mathurā. Shallow votive tanks with crude male figurines and musicians playing on drums or cymbals fall within this group of Kushāṇa terracottas. On the literary side these grotesque figures correspond to the vikaṭa, vāmana, kubjaka, kumbhāṇḍa, and deformed gaṇa types who were regarded as tutelary attendents of Śiva, Gaṇapati, Kārttikeya and Kubera. The figures were given a new interpretation, viz. as auspicious forms of various nidhis or treasures, named kharva, nikharva, mukunda, etc., all of them being associated with Kubera whose iconography also points to deformed features. According to the Purāṇas¹ they were of many forms (svarūpa, arūpa, virūpa) and names, having a great variety of human (nānāmukha) and animal faces (ṭhāmrigamukha), with gaping mouth (vyāditāsya), flat faces (chipiṭānana) and terrible forms (karāla). A strange blending of religious forms made their list very long; sometimes treating them as benevolent gaṇas and at other times as malevolent asuras, both of them regarded as subsidiary forms of Śiva depicted in his temple. The reason of the emergence of these gaṇa figures in the Kushāṇa period seems to be due to the Śaiva movement under Pāśupata teachers who laid equal emphasis on the worship of gaṇas also.