According to local folklore, two of India’s great, sacred rivers, the Ganges and the Yamuna, were personified as eponymous goddesses. They were often represented at either side of the lower part of temple doorways, so that worshippers could enter the building feeling symbolically cleansed by the sight of them.
In the present example, a river goddess, probably Yamuna, stands in graceful tribhanga position, a classical standing pose in which the body bends in three directions, whilst her male attendant stands to her left holding a lotus blossom. She wears a transparent dhoti and an extravagant knotted belt and is adorned with necklaces, armlets and other jewels. An elaborate large-leafed lotus vine rises above the two figures, acting as a parasol.
Similar examples of river goddesses can be found in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as well as the Avery Brundage Collection at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco’s Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture.1 A closely related example is in the collection of the Musée national des arts asiatiques-Guimet. Of the Guimet figure, scholar Amina Okada notes: ‘[She] is possibly Yamuna – whose usual position was generally to the right of the sanctuary entrance. …[D]ominated by curves and undulating lines which highlight the sensual, voluptuous forms of the goddess and her attendants, the sculpture adheres to the post-Gupta artistic conventions, notably as they developed in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan around the 8th and 9th centuries’.2
