Khmer Style Sandstone Durga Mahishasuramardini on Buffalo Demon 44"H

Southeast Asia, Cambodia, Khmer revival. Southeast Asia, Cambodia, Khmer style, 20th century CE. A four-armed sandstone figure of Durga as Mahishasuramardini, slayer of the buffalo demon, carved in the frontal manner of early Cambodian sculpture. She stands above the slain water buffalo Mahisha, who lies at her feet with his swept horns and broad muzzle carved in low relief across the plinth. Her weight rests evenly on both feet, with hips squared. In keeping with the Khmer approach, her victory is shown not through struggle but through calm presence above the defeated demon. Engaged columns joined by a bar support the figure, the device early Khmer sculptors used to hold an image fully in the round. The myth she embodies is the gods' confession of their own limits. Mahisha, swollen with power won through long austerity, could be checked by neither Shiva nor Vishnu nor any single deity, and so the gods poured their massed energies into a woman and lent her their weapons, that she might wield all their powers at once. She carries here the attributes of Vishnu, the spoked wheel raised in one upper hand, the conch opposite, the borrowed armament that marks Durga as the sum of the divine assembly. Her tall cylindrical crown echoes the mukuta of Vishnu himself, and banded, scrolling curls frame a full and gently smiling face. The work belongs to the twentieth century, a devotional carving in the venerable Cambodian manner, cut by a hand steeped in the canon of the temple goddesses. It asks to be read as an act of homage, the old iconography of Devi triumphant carried forward in living stone... the serene authority of the ancient pattern, newly made. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids. Item # 197323

Estimate:$1,800

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