Head of a Yaksha (c. 125 BCE): Art, History and Details

Head of a Yaksha (c. 125 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Colossal statues of yakshas, male divinities who personify the productive forces of nature, were especially popular in the northern Indian region around the ancient city of Mathura. They were installed in shrines in parks and gardens, often associated with extraordinary trees. The red sandstone is from a nearby quarry, called Sikri.

Object facts

• Title: Head of a Yaksha
• Date: c. 125 BCE
• Culture: Northern India, Uttar Pradesh, Mathura, Shunga period (185–78 BCE)
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: mottled red sandstone
• Dimensions: Overall: 48.2 x 40 x 35.6 cm (19 x 15 3/4 x 14 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art - Sunga
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.45

Collection credit

Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Art of India; Stone Sculpture. [New York, Tokyo]: The Asia Society, 1962.
• Lee, Sherman E. “Year in Review 1962.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 49, no. 9, 1962, pp. 199–227.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.