The Hindu deity Brahmani

This deity is one of a group of female deities known as the “Seven Mothers.” Many of the group shared the names and attributes of male deities. This one is Brahmani, who, like the male deity Brahma, has four heads. (One is understood to be at the back). The figure also holds Brahma’s prayer beads, and has Brahma’s animal vehicle, the goose, carved between the feet. The hair, the matted dreadlocks of an ascetic, is piled high, and the left hand forms the wish-granting gesture; the missing right hand would have formed the gesture of reassurance.

This sculpture was once situated in a temple, together with dozens of other goddess figures.  They portrayed female power and energy in nurturing, but also erotic, frightening, and potentially violent forms. A devotee would seek, by rendering worship and offerings, to gain the favor and protection of these goddesses. The scholar Padma Kaimal calls the group of figures “a presentation of the divine feminine as multiple, immanent, and ubiquitous.”

Most of the free-standing sculptures from this ruined temple were removed in the late 1920s and were soon for sale to museums and collectors in the West. The story of when and how they were removed is told in Kaimal’s book Scattered Goddesses: Travels with the Yoginis (2012).