The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c12.3

c12.3

The reproduction which we publish is sufficiently adequate to enable us to dispense with anything beyond a succinct description, insisting less upon what is still to be seen at the first glance than upon what only a close examination reveals. The principal subject is a seated woman, holding in the hollow of her right arm a child in swaddling clothes, to whom with her left hand she presents her bosom. Her head, surrounded by a triple circular nimbus, is covered as far as the shoulders by a veil, embroidered round the hems and tied back with a ribbon. She is clothed down to the feet in a tunic with long sleeves, open at the breast and quite analogous to those which we have seen worn by the women of Kashmir. This robe is strewn with lozenges — themselves subdivided into four like figures, each marked by a red spot — which were probably woven in the stuff; the collar, cuffs, opening and hem being bordered with the same embroidery as the veil. The feet are shod in slippers without heels, depicted in black, and the neck is adorned with a necklace of the same hue. The child is tightly swathed up to the neck, like a mummy. The chair on which the woman sits, in a very awkward position, is without arms or back, but very massive and much ornamented. From the front we perceive only two rectangular uprights, fitted between two frames of the same shape, the one which rests on the ground being a little wider than that which serves as a seat. The mouldings are repeated symmetrically. Those of the two inner crossbars reproduce the regularly outlined curves of the embroidery : the decoration of the outer framework and of the uprights introduces halves or quarters of the lotus flower into the intervals of the curved undulations or the angular zigzags of a stripe.