Cleveland Museum of Art

Railing Pillar with a Yakshi (Female Nature Divinity)

Date

c. 125–50 CE

Medium

red sandstone

Culture

Northern India, Mathura, Kushan period

Department

Indian and Southeast Asian Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

This pillar would have been an upright of a stair banister, probably leading to an upper circumambulatory path of a Buddhist or Jain sacred monument known as a stupa. It has the image of a nature divinity grasping the branch of an ashoka tree with one hand and touching her breast full of nourishing milk with the other. The reverse side of the pillar is decorated with a stupa at the top and a partially damaged scene set in the architectural framework below. Flowers of the ashoka tree ( saraca asoca ) are bright red.

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