Yakshi (female fertility spirit)

ca. 2nd century

In ancient India, voluptuous semidivine women called yakshi embodied the bounty of nature. The fertility spirit’s large breasts carry a mother’s milk, and the pointed-leaf ashoka tree she grasps represents the earth’s bounty. To satisfy rural populations who thought their survival depended on honoring such nature deities, Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism all adopted them as protectors and attendants. This curved stone was once placed overhead as part of a gateway to a Buddhist sacred site. Each side is carved with a yakshi grasping an ashoka tree so that the worshipper is blessed both coming and going.

Sandstone

43 1/2 x 16 x 9 in. (110.49 x 40.64 x 22.86 cm)

Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection

44.62

Now on view at the Asian Art Museum

Resources

Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, "Indian Buddhist Sculpture", February 3 - August 20, 1990, (02/03/1990 - 08/20/1990)

Louisville, KY, J. B. Speed Art Museum, "Indian Buddhist Sculpture from American Collections," 1968

Portland, Oregon, Portland Art Museum, "Gift to a City: Masterworks from the Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection in the Seattle Art Museum", 1965, cat. # 67

New York, Asia Society, "Art of India - Stone Sculpture," 1962

Wellesley College, Farnsworth Art Musuem, "Art of India," 1953

Los Angeles County Museum, "Art of Greater India," 1950, no. 27

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Asian Art Museum, Boundless: Stories of Asian Art, Feb. 8, 2020 - ongoing.

Published ReferencesLee, Sherman E. "A Kushan Yakshi Bracket," in Artibus Asiae, vol. 12, no. 3, 1949, pp. 184-188, fig. 1, 2.

Los Angeles County Museum, "Art of Greater India," cat., 1950, no. 27, p. 19, fig.

Art News, XIIX (April 1950), p. 18, fig.

Trubner, Henry, Oriental Art, vol. III, No. 1, 1950, p. 33, fig. 1 p. 35

"Handbook, Seattle Art Museum: Selected Works from the Permanent Collections." Seattle, WA: Seattle Art Museum, 1951, p. 23 (b&w)

Bowen, Betty. "Seattle Art Museum Plays Host to Fair Visitors," in Washington Highway News (May/June 1962), p. 7

Asia Society, "Art of India/Stone Sculpture," cat., 1962, p. 39, no. 22

Portland, Oregon, Portland Art Museum, "Gift to a City: Masterworks from the Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection in the Seattle Art Museum", 1965, cat. # 67

"Gift to a City" exhibition catalogue. Portland, OR: Portland Art Museum, 1965, cat. no. 67

Begley, W. E., "Indian Buddhist Sculpture," cat., J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, 1968, no. 9, illus.

"Archives of Asian Art," XXIV, 1970-71, p. 115

Trubner, Henry, William J. Rathbun and C.A. Kaputa, "Asiatic Art in the Seattle Art Museum," 1973, p. 99 #19

Trubner, Henry. "Asian Art in the Seattle Art Museum: Fifty Years of Collecting." Seattle, WA: Seattle Art Museum, 1983, p. 6, illus. b&w

Knauer, Elfriede Regina. "Paul Manship's Heracliscus Fountain at the American Academy in Rome," in Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, Vol. 41 (1996), pp. 194-218; p. 205, fig. 11

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