The Hindu Temple v2.c12.302

v2.c12.302

The forced, double bend of this dancing figure, playing ball, shows the image with its scanty loin cloth, loosened and slipping down, akin in its nakedness to the images of Yakṣīs of the Kuṣāṇa age. The weighty body in its movement is upheld by the horizontal profiles of the wall against which the figure leans; its main horizontal divisions, at the joints, are underlined at the height of neck and shoulders, hip and knee by the fillets of the wall; figure and wall conform in their articulation; the lateral, excessive deviation of the Apsarā from the vertical cuts across the edges of the offset at her back, relates her movement to wall surfaces further back in depth and of greater width so that the image is related to the whole buttress across which the waves of her wilfulness are staged.