Footnotes

A SILVER INLAID COPPER ALLOY FIGURE OF VISHNU
GREATER KASHMIR, 7TH/8TH CENTURY

克什米爾 七/八世紀 銅錯銀毘濕奴像

Published:
Arman Neven, Sculpture des Indes, Brussels, 1978, p. 77, no. 136.

Exhibited:
Sculpture des Indes, Société Générale de Banque, Brussels, 8 December 1978 - 31 January 1979.

Provenance:
With Claude de Marteau, Brussels, by 1970s

This distinctive bronze of Vishnu follows an early aesthetic tradition placing the chakra and mace in his lower hands, where they could serve as structural supports for the sculpture. This function is similarly exhibited by a terracotta sculpture from the Gupta period in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1987.142.293). A rare bronze representation of Surya attributed to the 6th/7th century in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (EA1986.2), also employs this device, but the attributes are personified as attendant figures.

The figure's pronounced pectorals, wild curly tresses recalling Gandharan flowing locks, and simple three-leaf crown, all suggest an attribution to the region of Greater Kashmir, at the crossroads of Northwest India, the Himalayas, and Central Asia. The region thus spanned Himachal Pradesh, Swat, and even beyond the Khyber Pass, modern-day Afghanistan. For instance, the Ashmolean Surya, which displays a similar facial type with added silver inlay, is attributed to the Kabul Valley. An early Vajrapani attributed to 6th-/7th-century Kashmir also shares these features, with the addition of a svelte, lightly clad physique similar to that of the present sculpture, a silhouette derived from the Gupta period (see Bonhams, New York, 18 March 2013, lot 40). An Avalokiteshvara attributed to 7th-century Swat provides a further landmark in the corpus of enigmatic, early Northwestern Indian bronzes which the present sculpture belongs to (von Schroeder, Indo-Tibetan Bronzes, 1981, p. 83, no. 5A).