Research Paper on Yakshi Railing Pillar - Ancient Indian Beauty

Introduction

The railing pillar with Yakshi was developed in India, in the second century. It is the pan-Indian nature spirits representing the female. Yakshi, is depicted as the female nature spirits, and found often on the phases of monuments and reperesent fecundity. The sockets placed on each part of the figure have created aligned stone crossbars, and the masons have been used as sculptures of the early stone monuments.

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'The railing pillar with yakshi has variety of contours, and the sculpture is part of the Buddhist stupa that acts as a reliquary mound and is vital in the pan-Indian deities' (Kumar, 2018). The sculpture represents an object of a female in a tree and stands in a position known as the triple bend in the ancient period. The arm and one leg of the sculpture show that it has broken off, and the face expression is delightful. The ornaments on her body are earrings and the anklets. The yakshi however has full hips that represent beauty, and the ancient people believe to be a sign of abundant fertility and an act of childbearing. It also has breasts and a narrow waist and covers her hips with a jeweled girdle. She stays on the crouching figure and in a dwarflike state and the tree in which she is in has branches that are possible of an Ashoka tree. The tree on her head spreads well, and the opposite side of the railing pillar is shown as the lotus flowers. The credit line of the railing pillar with yakshi is on the Norton Art in the state of Jennifer.

Medium

The sculpture is made up of the red sandstone and has various decorations that include the three convex lenses in the shaped openings to create the railing beams. It is also designed with three established and designed lotus blossoms. The stones used to make the yakshi in the railing pillar were collected in the ancient period. The artist used various 'momentum decorations to style the sculpture and multiple symbols to make it a more appealing figure' (Unnikrishnan, 2017). The stones were collected to make the sculpture, and the pillar is created from the salabhanjika representations. The component represents an architectural framework, and its description makes it a good artwork. Through the sculpture showing full hips and representing a form of fertility, then it makes it a suitable medium for art. The stupa also makes the Buddhist monuments very important, and it acts as deities of the pan-Indian, making it a proper technique.

The red sandstone used in creating the sculpture provided the dead an opportunity to use the afterlife and as a channel of remembering their lives in depicting the realities. However, the bottom of the railing pillar is split diagonally with diagonal placements to develop a staircase that leads to the pradaksinapatha. The breast of the sculpture also represents the mother of creation, and the yakshi has a partially damaged scene set that acts as an architectural framework. The advantage of the statue is that its fertility brings blossom and childbearing that has a history in India and images of the predate Buddhism. It represents feminine, and the trees used in its development are used in worshipping the female spirits. The tree represents an act of enlightenment, and the voluptuous figure is essential in welcoming worshippers and creates and imparted element in enclosing the stupa in the space. The disadvantage of the sculpture is that it has eased the transition of worshippers who used to worship nature spirits and divinities to adapting the new Buddhist acts developed by the stupa.

The Artist's Process

Yakshi are the crucial elements in the early Buddhist monuments and acts as a decorative element that is found in the archeological sites. The sculpture, however, became the Salabhanjikas through the passing of different centuries and became the element of the Indian sculpture and the Indian temple architecture. The substances that the artist used in the process of making the sculpture were using the 'compromised formula that helped in installing the yakshi at the temple that later became owned by Kanjiracottu' (Behrendt, 2019). Through people who came to the temple like the sculpture, the artist used the medium in creating the artwork. However, this led to the development of various yakshis. The yakshi are the local spirits of water and trees and identified the figures of modern art historians.

Through the various sculptures produced, the artist looked for a unique form to create a different kind of a yakshi. Therefore the artist turned the medium into artwork through considering fertility and the act of feminine and childbearing in his work. He used personal tools and sandstone to create the sculpture, and the realization of the sculpture created a full form with a definite sense of the organic articulation. The technique that he used was to 'flatten the back of the yakshi with a superficial indication of the modeling' (Kumar, 2018). The figures, however, used in the Indian folk religion were accepted in various communities and created the surviving stone monumental to represent and create a good yakshi. However, the character of the element is to create a quality of inwardly that its breath is well conveyed. The worshippers of the ancient stupas had encountered the value as they passed through the gates of the stupa enclosure, and enclosing with a stupa in the railing is vital in demarcating the sacred area of the sculpture.

Works Cited

Behrendt, K. (2019). How to Read Buddhist Art. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=sDzADwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP2&dq=railing+pillar+with+yakshi+in+the+northon+museum&ots=VAMrdSB8uH&sig=0XE8_B4pf_yAX2P_wHEjUUoebEk

Kumar, R. (2018). Unit-26 Monuments and Museums. IGNOU. Retrieved from http://www.egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/42409/1/Unit-26.pdf

Unnikrishnan, S. M. (2017). Visualizing Yakshi in the Religious History of Kerala. Heritage: Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies in Archaeology, 5, 757-777. Retrieved from http://www.heritageuniversityofkerala.com/JournalPDF/Volume5/52.pdf