Nine Celestial Bodies (Navagraha) (700s): Art, History and Details

Nine Celestial Bodies (Navagraha) (700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Near temple entrances, the nine celestial bodies were depicted in an orderly row, often in figural form. From left to right they are: Sun with a tall crown and the female Dawn in front of him. The next five figures are nearly identical: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. As a portent of doom, Saturn was wounded by a goddess to prevent him from moving swiftly, so he stands on one leg. The bodiless head is Rahu, the eclipse, who swallows the moon until it falls out his neck. The serpent-tailed figure is a comet.

Object facts

• Title: Nine Celestial Bodies (Navagraha)
• Date: 700s
• Culture: Central India
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: Sandstone
• Dimensions: Overall: 44.4 x 158.6 x 18.2 cm (17 1/2 x 62 7/16 x 7 3/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1971.61

A detail from the museum

The Sun (Surya) is the only figure who wears boots and holds fully open lotus flowers.

Collection credit

Gift of Doris and Ed Wiener

Further reading listed by the museum

• “Annual Report for 1971.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 59, no. 6, 1972, pp. 147–179.

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.