Shiva as Lord of Music (c. 1000): Art, History and Details

Shiva as Lord of Music (c. 1000) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

After he created the world, Shiva manifested himself in a variety of ways, each of which emphasized a different aspect of his all-encompassing, complex personality. As Lord of Music, he is serene and beneficent. He holds a stringed instrument called the vina, which is missing in this example, but the fingers of his lowered hands are in the position of playing it. His other two attributes in this form are the axe and the rearing antelope, which references knowledge of the Vedic texts, which are the foundational books of the Hindu religion. Music was considered to be an essential component of sacred learning, and its rhythms reflect the structures of the ongoing creation of the universe.

Object facts

• Title: Shiva as Lord of Music
• Date: c. 1000
• Culture: South India, Tamil Nadu, Chola period (900-13th century)
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: bronze
• Dimensions: Overall: 76.5 x 45 cm (30 1/8 x 17 11/16 in.); Base: 26 x 25 cm (10 1/4 x 9 13/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1971.117

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1971.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 59, no. 1, 1972, pp. 3–46.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.
• Dehejia, Vidya. Art of the Imperial Cholas. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.

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.