The Hindu god Shiva is represented here as the cosmic dancer whose dance engenders the creation of the universe. Shiva performs in the charming (lalita) dance posture with his hip thrust to the right. He stands on his right leg with his left leg raised. The lalita dance is one of the 108 dance postures described in texts such as the Natyashastra (200 BCE-200 CE) and the south Indian agamas (religious scriptures that have come down as tradition). Contrary to the better known southern Indian representations of Shiva dancing as Nataraja on the dwarf of ignorance, Apasmara Purusha (see M.75.1), in eastern Indian and Bangladeshi representations he dances on his bull mount, Nandi. This iconographic form is identified by inscription as Nartteshvara (Lord of Dance) on the base of a fragmentary sculpture found in a tank at Bharella, now in the Bangladesh National Museum (formerly the Dacca Museum). (Nalini Kanta Bhattasali, Iconography of Buddhist and Brahmanical Sculptures in the Dacca Museum (Dacca: Rai S. N. Bhadra Bahadur, 1929; reprint ed., New Delhi: Aryan Books International, 2001): 114-115, no. 3. A. (ii) a./3, Pl. XLIV (b). This was likely the original form of the now-damaged LACMA sculpture, which probably hails from the Dacca District or Tipperah District of Bangladesh.
Shiva has an ascetic’s piled hair (jata mukuta) and a third eye of wisdom (jñana netra). He wears an ascetic’s sash (yoga patta) worn across his left shoulder and abundant jewelry, including an ornate hip belt (katibandha). He originally had ten arms, but only two now remain intact on the left holding an ascetic’s water pot (kamandalu) and a skull cup (kapala). His principal attribute would have been the vina carried diagonally across his torso. He has an erect penis (urdhva linga) that symbolizes the generative energy of the universe. See also M.82.42.4.
