Essay name: Goddesses from the Samhitas to the Sutras
Author:
Rajeshri Goswami
Affiliation: Jadavpur University / Department of Sanskrit
This essay studies the Goddesses from the Samhitas to the Sutras. In short, this thesis examines Vedic goddesses by analyzing their images, functions, and social positions. It further details how natural and abstract elements were personified as goddesses, whose characteristics evolved with societal changes.
Chapter 1
118 (of 144)
External source: Shodhganga (Repository of Indian theses)
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Sri laksmi figure in Pompeu port brought from India around Mid. 2nd century A.D. by some merchants as the Indian form of Venus stella Maris, the protectress of seafares. 137 Around the 2nd 录 upto 1st century B.C. reliefs of
Sr墨-Laksmi have been found on the posts of the statues of tree
goddesses.
In the early 1st century B.C. 1.e. around 187 - 75 B.C.
a figure of Sri has been found on the pillar of the great balus-
#35
trade at Bodhagaya.
66 In the late Maurya to the early Gupta period, stone
fine work earrings at Bhir mound Taxila and Terracotta
or moulded plaques, modelled heads and busts have been
found from Pataliputra to Taxila. These represent a
standing female divinity with elaborate coiffure dressed
in a tunic or nude to the waist, with a skirt of diapha-
nous muslin. These may be votive tablets or mother
goddesses and fertility deities -- prototypes of Mayadevi
and Lak峁i
a
36 Another relief of Sri-Laksmi on a medallion of a
rail of Stupa No. II at Sanchi is also important. Here
the goddess is accompanied by two attendants bearing food,
and drink, which may recall the Sri "bringing food and
drink", of the Taittiriya Upanisad (1.4).
9937 35 Hermann Goetz, "India: 5000 years of Indian Art,
London, 1959, p. 49.
36 A.K. Coomaraswamy, op. cit., p. 15.
37 Dr. Niranjan Ghosh, op. cit., p. 56.
