Shiva as Lord of Music (Shiva Vinadhara)
900 – 970 A.D.
Object PlaceKaveripakkam, Tamilnadu, Southern India
Medium/TechniqueGreen schist
DimensionsOverall: 122 x 80 x 35.6 cm (48 1/16 x 31 1/2 x 14 in.)
Mount (Reinforced wooden pedestal (dry mounted)): 99.1 x 83.8 x 53.3 cm (39 x 33 x 21 in.)
Mount (Reinforced wooden pedestal (dry mounted)): 99.1 x 83.8 x 53.3 cm (39 x 33 x 21 in.)
Credit LineMaria Antoinette Evans Fund
Accession number33.18
On View
On viewClassificationsSculpture
Collections
NOTES:
[1] This goddess temple, dating to the late 9th or 10th centuries, once contained as many as 64 sculptures. The temple fell out of use some time in the subsequent centuries, and no trace of its structure remained by the 19th century. Near the end of the century local devotees salvaged seven of the sculptures—not including this Shiva--and built a new temple to house them in Kanchipuram. See Padma Kaimal, Scattered goddesses: Travels with the Yoginis (2012) and Emma Natalya Stein and Katherine Kasdorf, "Alternative Narratives for the Tamil Yoginis: Reconsidering the 'Kanchi Yoginis' Past, Present, and Future," (2022).
[2] In a letter of May 5, 1926, French archaeologist Gabriel Jouveau-Dubreuil wrote to dealer C.T. Loo explaining that his Indian partner Tangavelou had purchased the Shiva and a second sculpture (not in the MFA collection) from a community of weavers, who venerated them and, for that reason, charged him a high price. Jouveau-Dubreuil also arranged to purchase the seven sculptures kept in the temple mentioned above, and at least four other sculptures that had belonged to the original temple complex. They exported the group to Paris in 1926. See Kaimal 2012 and Stein, Kasdorf 2022 (as above, note 1).
late 10th century A.D.
about 2nd century A.D.
about 2nd century A.D.
about 3rd century A.D.
3rd century C.E.
about 3rd century
9th–10th century A.D.
11th century
2nd–3rd century A.D.
about 3rd century A.D.
about late 10th century A.D.