SuzanneDee, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Despite the amazing polish (the “Mauryan Polish”), this statue is made of sandstone. The polishing technique originated ca. 300 BCE, which was when this work was originally dated, but carried over for centuries. And the treatment of her forelock bun (characteristically Kushan) has led to more recent date estimates of the 1st or 2nd Century CE. Sadly, her left arm was lost in ancient times, while her nose was only broken in recent times while she was traveling for the “Festival of India” event – which resulted in her immediate return and vow never to let her travel again.
A yakshi is a minor female deity, typically associated with fertility. Males of this type are yakshas. This woman could be considered a spectacular invitation to make babies, but she does not actually conform to the traditional posing of a yakshi, which would have been tribhanga, or “three bends” at the neck, waist and knee, the pose in which Krishna is most frequently shown. Instead, she stands in samapada pose, with equal weight on both legs, usually straight. This pose is associated with Boddhisatwas, and suggests something very different from a fertility spirit, a ganika, which is a courtesan somewhat like an Indian version of the Japanese geisha: a beautiful, cultured woman valued not just for her sexuality, but for the various talents of a courtly woman: singing, dancing, poetry, playing music and so on.
Unlike the Dancing Girl of the Harappan era (http://gnorman.org/2024/03/04/the-harappan-dancing-girl-c-2300-1750-bc/), this woman’s sexual organs are covered, though her ample breasts are bared. She carries a chauri or fly-whisk in one hand, a common accessory of the ganika, and incidentally what may have been carried in the left hand of the Dancing Girl.
This was no temple prostitute (devadasi), but instead a “marketplace prostitute” who was owned in common by a gana, or public association. The word ganika means “flower,” and actually was the public name of a semi-mythical woman (whose actual personal name was Chandramani), whose home was lit with candles in the night, and who wore beautiful clothing and jewelry. In classical stories, this woman eventually repented of her “sinful” ways and achieved salvation by teaching a parrot to say the name of Lord Raam. See this excellent article: https://www.basicsofsikhi.com/post/ganika .
She was the product of a much later era than the Harappan Dancing Girl, and a much more likely inspiration for my Sutanuka, though the girl of my story is younger, foreign, and rather different looking than the native women.