Lajja Gauri from Naganatha Temple, Bijapur District, Karnataka, India

This is a stone sculpture from Naganatha Temple, Bijapur District, Karnataka, India, c. 650 CE, now in the Badami Museum.


Bijapur District, Karnataka, India

This is Devi as the Creatress, as Mother of the Universe, as the Life-Giving Force of Nature, in a bold, uncompromising display of the Divine Feminine Principle. The late scholar David Kinsley, who wrote several popular studies of the Goddess in India, noted that Lajja Gauri's headlessness is meant to focus Her devotee's attention away from Her individual personalities, and upon Her cosmogonic function as the Source of Everything That Is. He wrote in 1986:

"Some very ancient ... examples have been discovered in India of nude goddesses squatting or with their thighs spread ... The arresting iconographic feature of these images is their sexual organs, which are openly displayed. These figures often have their arms raised above their bodies and are headless or faceless. Most likely, the headlessness of the figures [is intended to] focus attention on their physiology, [placing the] emphasis on sexual vigor, life, and nourishment."

Without a doubt, the most comprehensive monograph to date on Lajja Gauri is Bolon's Forms of the Goddess Lajja Gauri in Indian Art, published in 1992 by Penn State University Press. Bolon judges that the sculpture of the goddess above is probably the finest Lajja Gauri sculpture still in existence. Here is her lyrical description of the idol:

The modeling of the female figure is supple and sensitive. The suggestion of soft, sagging stomach flesh, like the slackening of a woman's abdomen after childbirth, is masterly. The breasts are firm with folds of flesh beneath them. The arms and shoulders are delicate and feminine. The legs, in uttanapad, are spread more naturally than in other [Lajja Gauri] images with the knees up, the feet are flexed with soles up, and the toes are tensed. The nude body is ornamented with necklace, channavira [body-encompassing jewelry that hangs from the neck, crosses between the breasts, passes around the waist and up the back], girdle, bracelets, and armlets that are like a vine tendril wrapping around the arms and actually ending in a leaf. Tassels of the anklets also seem plantlike. There is a cloth woven through the thighs.

"... The half-open lotus flower, sitting like a ruff on the shoulders, is turned three-quarters toward the viewer. The goddess holds, to either side of her lotus head, a half-open, smaller lotus flower, the stalk of which winds around her hand. The fingers themselves have a tentril-like quality. The fingers of the right hand seem to form a swastika, symbol of fortune and well-being. No doubt, the suggestion of her relation to vegetation is intended. ... This image is a masterpiece of fluid modeling and conscious symbol-making."