Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Yaksha or Lakshmi
Not on view
This female bust belongs to a small corpus of sandstone reliefs from early Cham sites in central Vietnam that likely represent generic yakshas and yakshis (nature spirits). This yakshi displays a radiating sunlike nimbus, denoting her divine status. A related crowned male from the same site may represent Vishnu, and thus this female would be his consort, Lakshmi. Shrines were built for both in early fifth-century central India, and paired icons from that time are extant. Both became major cult deities in later Cham art, and this icon may signal their recent arrival in the Cham territories.
cat. no. 16
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