A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c13.s2.16

c13.s2.16

Nepalese bronze statuettes of any considerable artistic excellence seem to be much less numerous than the Tibetan. The coppersmiths in Nepāl are more inclined to exercise their craft upon elaborate utensils used in worship than on images, and it is not easy to find Nepalese statuettes deserving of notice. Berlin has none, and it cannot be said with certainty that any of the Pitt-Rivers specimens come from Nepāl. Mr. Havell has reproduced (his Plate XLIV) a cleverly modelled four-armed figure, supposed, rightly or wrongly, to be Kuvera or Jambhala, the god of riches, which is an effective, though ugly, 'personification of materialism and the worldly life.' A Tibetan gilt bronze image of the same deity, fairly well executed, is in the Pitt-Rivers Museum. It has only two arms, and is about 5 inches high. The wasp-waisted Tārās, which Mr. Havell admires vastly, present mere parodies of the human form which can be described as idealized superhuman bodies only by extremely enthusiastic critics. More or less similar specimens are described and illustrated by Dr. Coomaraswamy in the *Burlington Magazine*, May, 1910.