Section from a Portable Shrine (100s CE): Art, History and Details

Section from a Portable Shrine (100s CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Figures of deities who protect children are featured in this relief carving. A form of Skanda holding a bird and a flower stands next to a regal yakshi with pointed rodent or elephant ears. A diminutive figure who may be a child is shown kneeling at his feet. Above, the six-headed mother goddess Shashthi sits next to Skanda, holding the spear.

Object facts

• Title: Section from a Portable Shrine
• Date: 100s CE
• Culture: Pakistan, Gandhara, Kushan period
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: gray schist
• Dimensions: Overall: 14.6 x 6 cm (5 3/4 x 2 3/8 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art - Kushan, Gandhara
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1973.76

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• "The Year in Review for 1973." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 61, no. 2 (1974): 31-78.
• Czuma, Stanislaw J., and Rekha Morris. Kushan Sculpture: Images from Early India. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1985.
• Koizumi, Yoshihide, “Study on the Portable Shrines in Northwest India.” Proceedings of the Tokyo National Museum 東京国立博物館紀要, vol. 35 (2000), pp. 87-158.

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.