River Goddess Ganga (c. 700): Art, History and Details

River Goddess Ganga (c. 700) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The Ganges River that runs from the Himalaya Mountains east to the Bay of Bengal is India's most sacred river. Hindu myths tell of how the god Shiva held out a lock of his hair to catch the fall of the heavenly river, identified with the Milky Way, so that it would trickle gently to earth. The river is personified as the goddess Ganga, and since she flows eternally through the hair of Shiva, the river is considered holy. Sculptures of Ganga were placed at the doorway of temples, for the image of the purifying waters symbolically cleanses those who enter the sacred space. She stands on a crocodile-like creature called makara, here shown with a fancifully foliated tail.

Object facts

• Title: River Goddess Ganga
• Date: c. 700
• Culture: Northern India, Uttar Pradesh, Mathura
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: sandstone
• Dimensions: Overall: 108 cm (42 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1966.119

A detail from the museum

The vein of red sandstone visible in the broken top locates the source as a quarry near Mathura.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.
• Lee, Sherman E. "Golden Anniversary Acquisitions: September 10 through October 16." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 53, no. 7 (1966): 181–284.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.

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.