The Development of Hindu Iconography c16.80.2

c16.80.2

She ‘is shown sitting squatted, with her knees up, on a rectangular pedestal, holding a manuscript in her left hand. The right hand, which was raised, has been lost. The figure is clothed in very stiffly executed drapery, a small attendant with hair dressed in rolls stands on each side. The attendant on the left wears a tunic and holds a jar—the attendant on the right has his hands clasped in adoration.’ The pedestal bears a six-line inscription in the Brāhmī script of the Kushan period; it records the installation of the image of Sarasvatī, the gift of the Smith Gova, son of Siha at the instance of the preacher Āryya-Deva in the year 54 (or 44 as suggested by Smith).¹ The sculpture thus can be dated in the first half of the 2nd century A.D. (either 132 or 122 A.D.), and be regarded as one of the earliest representations of Sarasvatī, though most probably in its Jaina setting. The pitcher in the hand of one of the attendants may symbolise the receptacle of knowledge (jñānabhāṇḍa) of which she was the presiding deity. In the Bharhut and Khitching figures the folk element remains supreme; but even in this developed hieratic form from Mathura the primitive folk character is clearly discernible in the general outline of the body (nyagrodhaparimaṇḍalā), the sitting posture and the arrangement of the drapery. It will be of interest now to compare with these early prototypes one or two of the fully developed iconographic representations of the goddess of a much later date.