Varahi (c. 1300s): Art, History and Details

Varahi (c. 1300s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This Hindu goddess has the body of a young mother and the head of a female boar, which is the meaning of the Sanskrit word varahi, with the third eye of true knowledge. This sculpture was one of a set of seven goddesses associated with worship of the Hindu god Shiva or the mother goddess. The objects in three of her four hands reference the countercultural tantric Hindu practices of drinking revolting liquids from a bowl made from a skull. The fish implies the consumption of illicit food, and the snake pertains to the noose that keeps one bound in fear that leads to inevitable death. In tantric Hindu rituals, this goddess would aid the practitioners in overcoming their fears that keep them attached to ordinary life in the world, instead of reaching the liberated state of union with the creator.

Object facts

• Title: Varahi
• Date: c. 1300s
• Culture: Nepal
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: bronze
• Dimensions: Overall: 21 cm (8 1/4 in.)
• Collection: Nepalese Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1978.70

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Pal, Pratapaditya. "Two Gilt-Copper Survivors of the 1934 Earthquake and Some Related Objects from Nepal." Berliner indologische Studien, vol. 23 (2017): pp. 265-290
• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1978.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 66, no. 1 (January 1979): 3–47.
• Schroeder, Ulrich von. Indo-Tibetan Bronzes. 1st ed. Hong Kong, Glattbrugg, Switzerland: Visual Dharma Publications; Sole distributor, Nanda Distribution, 1981.

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.