The Hindu Goddess Chamunda

My gallery Comment Tag Share
View comments
No comments have been posted yet.
Add a comment
Please log in to add comments.
Enter your LACMA Collections username.
Enter the password that accompanies your username.
New to our collections website? Sign up to create an account and start saving your favorites. Please note that this account is not the same as the MyLACMA account you may have for ticketing and membership transactions.
Current tags
This item has not been tagged yet.
Please log in to add tags.
Enter your LACMA Collections username.
Enter the password that accompanies your username.
New to our collections website? Sign up to create an account and start saving your favorites. Please note that this account is not the same as the MyLACMA account you may have for ticketing and membership transactions.
* Nearly 20,000 images of artworks the museum believes to be in the public domain are available to download on this site. Other images may be protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights. By using any of these images you agree to LACMA's Terms of Use.

The Hindu Goddess Chamunda

Nepal, 14th century
Sculpture
Copper with traces of gilding and paint; inlaid with gemstones
8 x 8 1/4 x 4 in. (20.32 x 20.96 x 10.16 cm)
Museum Associates Acquisition Fund (M.80.3)
South and Southeast Asian Art
Not currently on public view

Curator Notes

...
This tour de force of Nepalese bronze casting depicts Chamunda, one of the fiercest forms of the Great Goddess, Durga, the Hindu goddess of death and destruction. Her name is a contraction of the names of the demon generals Chanda and Munda, whom she slew in battle (see M.70.70). She is also one of the Mother Goddess (matrikas), the female creative aspects (shaktis) of the Hindu gods (see M.71.110.2 and M.80.157). The emaciated Chamunda is naked with desiccated breasts and bony limbs. She has fangs, a lolling tongue, and a third eye in her expressive face. She wears a tiara of skulls with fanlike fillets, a bear-skin loin cloth, and a long garland of severed skulls (mundamala). Chamunda has sixteen arms mainly holding various weapons. Beginning with the uppermost left hand and continuing clockwise, they are an elephant’s foot, trident with skulls, club, shield, severed head, the gesture of flicking drops of wine or blood as a tantric offering (bindu mudra), skull cup, chopper (also known as a flaying knife), sword, trident, noose (?), and another elephant’s foot. Originally, she held a flayed elephant’s skin behind her like a cape (only the elephant skin’s support lug remains on her back). She sits with her legs spread wide apart on a seat formed by three skulls, perhaps symbolic of the three ages: past, present, and future. Her legs are supported by her prostrate corpse (mritaka) mount. Flanking her are two carnivorous ghouls (pishacas) with lolling tongues and a hungry jackal representing the charnel grounds. See Vidya Dehejia, et al, Devi: The Great Goddess: Female Divinity in South Asian Art (Washington: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution in association with Mapin Publishing, Ahmedabad and Prestel Verlag, Munich, 1999), pp. 232-233, no. 11.
More...

Bibliography

  • Larson, Gerald et al.  In Her Image:  The Great Goddess in Indian Asia and the Madonna in Christian Culture.  Santa Barbara:  UCSB Art Museum, University of California, 1980.
  • Pal, Pratapaditya. Art of Nepal. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; University of California Press, 1985.
  • Larson, Gerald et al.  In Her Image:  The Great Goddess in Indian Asia and the Madonna in Christian Culture.  Santa Barbara:  UCSB Art Museum, University of California, 1980.
  • Pal, Pratapaditya. Art of Nepal. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; University of California Press, 1985.
  • Reedy, Chandra L.  Himalayan Bronzes:  Technology, Style and Choices.  Newark:  University of Delaware Press, 1997.
  • Pal, Pratapaditya.  Himalayas: An Aesthetic Adventure.  Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 2003.
More...