Two faces of a four-faced linga (Vamadeva and Sadyojata)

These faces ( B71S10 and 1992.354) are fragments of a four-faced linga, the emblem of the Hindu deity Shiva. When intact, this linga would have had a face positioned toward each of the four directions and would have been located in the inner sanctuary of a Hindu temple. Technically, it should be called a five-faced linga because a central, usually invisible face is understood to be present on top. The five faced linga has profound symbolic meaning. According to the great scholar of Hindu art Stella Kramrisch, each face refers to a major aspect and power of Shiva and corresponds to a natural element, to one of the human senses, to a philosophical principle, and of course to a direction. Ultimately, Kramrisch says, the five-faced linga is “the basis of the entire structure of the cosmos, of the world of Shiva and his transcendental reality.”

The faces shown here are:

• center: Sadyojata, Shiva as the source of existence (with third eye in forehead)

• at left: Vamadeva, Shiva’s feminine aspect (with female hairdress)

• at right: Aghora, Shiva in a frightening form (with third eye, and skull at front of hairdress)

The two attached faces were donated to the museum in 1971. In 1992 Darielle Mason, curator of Indian art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, noticed in a sales catalogue a third face that probably went with the other two, and alerted the Asian Art Museum, which was then able to acquire it. The styles of the three faces are very similar, as are the materials and sizes, and it seems highly likely that they are indeed parts of the same linga. Because of the extensive breakage, however, the pieces cannot now be fitted together.