Eastern India. The panel modeled with the goddess standing, the hands placed on her hips, the body with narrow shoulders, heavy breasts, wide hips, and accentuated limbs, richly adorned with large bracelets and anklets, belt with beaded tassels, flaring sashes and large spiral earrings, the head crowned with an elaborate headdress with five weapons, all enclosed within a stellate border.

Provenance: London trade.
Condition: Good condition, commensurate with age. Extensive wear, firing flaws, minor losses, nicks, scratches, and chips, along with signs of weathering, erosion, and encrustations. Old repairs, all consistent with ancient wares of 3,000 years or more.

Weight: 390 g
Dimensions: Height 25.5 cm

This is an early specimen of the Panchachuda, a type of celestial being from the Shunga period, alternatively described as a mother goddess, an apsara, and a yakshi, dating from the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. She is seen here wearing five weapons in her hair, from which her name is derived. The ornaments are elaborate, the earrings are large and disc-shaped. It is noteworthy that Mother figures and nature goddesses have been represented on Indus seals as three-dimensional objects, and as relief sculptures all the way through Mauryan (323-185 BCE), Shunga (4th-2nd centuries BCE) and Kushana (1st-3rd centuries) periods.

Terracotta was the traditional material for religious images in the Ganges Valley and in the Mauryan and Shunga periods (3rd-1st century BC). Considerable numbers of terracotta plaques have also been excavated at the ancient urban site of Chandraketugarh, in Bengal, suggesting that they served as icons for personal devotion in households or were placed at outdoor shrines. All are dominated by a hieratically enlarged central female figure whose precise identity is unknown to us. In this early phase of image worship in India, the goddess routinely appears with weapons projecting from her headdress, a form later associated with Durga.

Chandraketugarh is a 2,500 years old archaeological site located near the Bidyadhari river, about 35 km northeast of Kolkata, India, once an important hub of international maritime trade. The Asutosh Museum of Indian Art conducted excavations on the site from 1957 to 1968, which revealed relics of several historical periods, although the chronological classification remains incomplete to this day. Most of the Chandraketugarh terracottas are now in collections of museums in India and abroad, and only a few remain in private collections. According to some historians, the Chandraketugarh site and surrounding area could be the place known to ancient Greek and Roman writers as having the same name as the river Ganges.

Literature comparison:
Compare a closely related terracotta plaque of a panchachuda, Shunga period, 2^nd-1^st century BC, in the Asian Civilizations Museum, accession number 1995-01620. Compare a closely related terracotta plaque, dated 1^st century BC, exhibited in the Tsinghua University Art Museum, Beijing, The Craft of Modeling Clay: Cultural Exchanges in Ceramic Art Among the Ancient East and West, 22 March-31 July 2024.