- Title
- Entablature Frieze Adornment for a Durga Festival Shrine
- Date Made
- 1952
- Medium
- Opaque watercolor on paper
- Dimensions
- 38 1/2 x 57 1/4 in. (97.79 x 145.42 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2006.180.4
- Collecting Area
- South and Southeast Asian Art
- Curatorial Notes
This painted panel with Hindu deities was originally made to adorn the entablature frieze of a temporary shrine (pandal) during West Bengal’s annual Durga Puja festival held in the Indian month of Ashwin (September–October). Also observed in Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha (formerly Orissa), Tripura, Assam, and Bangladesh, the ten-day celebration commemorates the Hindu goddess Durga’s victory over the Buffalo-Demon Mahishasura. Images of the triumphant Durga, typically flanked by attending Hindu gods and goddesses, are displayed in front of radiant aureoles or erected in tripartite shrines with iconic frieze panels such as this example.
In the apex of the arch is an image of Shiva-Vinadhara (Shiva holding a vina [stringed instrument with a resonating gourd]) seated on Mount Kailasa. To the viewer’s right in descending order are Shiva’s wife Parvati holding their son, the baby Ganesha; Shiva’s bull mount, popularly called Nandi; the blue-skinned Krishna fluting to milkmaids (gopis); and Durga on her lion mount battling three warriors on horseback. To the viewer’s left in descending order are Hindu divinities and demigods in audience, including Shiva with his trident, the blue-skinned Vishnu, and the three-headed Brahma; the coronation of the green-skinned Rama, with his wife Sita enthroned beside him and his brother Lakshmana holding a ceremonial parasol (see M.2006.180.1); and the fierce goddess Kali with a lolling tongue on her lion mount fighting three archers on elephants.