Roundel with Mermaids and Lotus (c. 100 BCE): Art, History and Details

Roundel with Mermaids and Lotus (c. 100 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This ivory disk was possibly part of a massive earring around which lobes were stretched so that they rest on the shoulders. Eight figures that are half woman and half fish hold hands in a ring around a series of concentric circles containing floral imagery. Their hands and tails make the repeated form of an auspicious trident-shaped symbol, often depicted with fish tails in combination with a lotus flower. The full-breasted forms, the tails, and the lotus flowers evoke the imagery of life-giving waters. A circle of eight female figures later comes to refer to the maidens of the eight directions of the sky (ashtadikpalikas).

Object facts

• Title: Roundel with Mermaids and Lotus
• Date: c. 100 BCE
• Culture: India, Bengal, Chandraketugarh area, Shunga period (185–78 BCE)
• Type: Ivory
• Technique: ivory
• Dimensions: Diameter: 10.5 cm (4 1/8 in.); Overall: 2.5 cm (1 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 2010.295

Collection credit

Gift of John Eskenazi in honor of Dr. Stanislaw J. Czuma

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.