65. Terra-cotta Figurine

65. Terra-cotta Figurine
Terra-cotta
Height: 11 cm
Twentieth Century
Catalogue number 65.
Accession number 88.339.

These votive figurines are purchased inexpensively by village women and carried on pilgrimages to local temples, placed under roadside tree-shrines, and worshipped in home shrines for particular occasions. They are probably offered by women to their goddesses as part of fertility rituals.

These figurines, which represent fertility goddesses, reflect a class of terra-cottas Stella Kramrisch has described as "timeless." Mother goddess figurines with similar typology have been discovered from as early as the third millenium B. C. E., at sites of the Indus Valley Culture.


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