Ravana Shaking Mount Kailasa (700s): Art, History and Details

Ravana Shaking Mount Kailasa (700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

According to followers of the branch of Hinduism that considers Shiva to be the ultimate, original creator of the universe, he takes on a mythological form and resides in his created world. His home is in the Himalaya Mountains, on Mount Kailasa, where he lives with his wife Parvati. In one episode of Shiva's mythology, he presses down his big toe to quell the ten-armed demon Ravana, who tried to steal Mount Kailasa and take it away to his island. As Ravana was trying to shake the mountain loose, Parvati turned and clung to Shiva in fear— the moment depicted in this magnificent sculpture, which once formed part of a temple exterior. It is thought that Shiva created the world for the sake of his own enjoyment, his lila or divine play, and emanated himself into all the beings of creation: gods and demons, humans and animals. He shrouded their awareness of the reality that they were in essence the god Shiva himself, so that they would perform the actions of his cosmic drama.

Object facts

• Title: Ravana Shaking Mount Kailasa
• Date: 700s
• Culture: Central India, Madhya Pradesh, Chandela Dynasty, 8th century
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: sandstone
• Dimensions: Overall: 139 x 72 cm (54 3/4 x 28 3/8 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1971.173

Collection credit

Sundry Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.
• Donaldson, Thomas E. Síva-Pārvatī and Allied Images: Their Iconography and Body Language. New Delhi: D.K. Printworld, 2007.
• Quintanilla, Sonya Rhie. "Indic Art Returns." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 53, no. 5 (September/October 2013): 16–17.

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.