Icon and Identity: A Numismatic Enquiry into Early Indian Terracotta Figurines – the case of ‘Vasudhara’

ICON AND IDENTITY

A Numismatic Enquiry into Early Indian Terracotta Figurines – the case of

‘Vasudhara’

(DRAFT – NOT FOR CITATION)

Introduction

As Naman Ahuja has described in his essay, Indian terracottas have been studied by

scholars from a variety of perspectives and yet much remains to be done. An area that

has not yet been sufficiently exploited is a comparative analysis of the visual data

provided by the terracottas with other types of material evidence. This paper focuses

on a single icon and utlilizes the evidence from numismatics to interpret it.

Stylistically, many of the terracotta figurines exhibit close resemblance to the

sculptural art seen at early historical Buddhist monuments such as the stupas of

Sanchi and in particular Bharhut. These monuments have been dated to the immediate

post-Mauryan epoch, c. 200-100 BCE and as this period has been widely regarded as

that of a Brahmanic reassertion under the ‘Sunga’ dynasty and carries its name, hence

the nomenclature of these figurines as ‘Sunga’ terracottas. The provenance of these

figurines spreads widely across North India and examples have been known from a

number of early historical sites such as Chandraketugarh and Tamluk (West Bengal),

Kumrahar, Lauriya Nandangarh and Basarh (Bihar), Kausambi, Ahichhatra and

Mathura (UP), Sugh, Ropar and Naurangabad (Haryana). Stylistically similar images

but of non-terracotta media such as bronze have been found as far afield as Bannu in

NWFP, Pakistan. As will be demonstrated later, at least one of these iconic depictions

enjoys circulation as far south as Karur in Tamilnadu.

The terracottas therefore represent a genre of ancient art of widespread

circulation. As most of these figurines seem to be religious, their spread across such a

wide expanse assumes immense significance from the viewpoint of understanding

religion in ancient India and the nature of early cults. As their chronology suggests,

they occupy a cardinal position in art history, preceding the great stylistic movements

of Indian art, namely the Gandhara and Mathura schools. As the most numerous

instances of visual imagery, these figurines constitute one of the strongest components

of material evidence at our disposal and their study is crucial if we are to understand

the development of Indian art and religion.

The so-called ‘Sunga’ terracottas include plaques and figurines, which are made

primarily by employing a moulding technique and exhibit a tremendous range of

anthropomorphic, zoomorphic and theriomorphic imagery. Predominantly, a female

figure variously referred to as ‘mother’ or ‘fertility’ goddess is encountered amongst

these. In many instances the divine status of the figure is accentuated by a range of

elements that ultimately evolve as an iconic and symbolic programme associated with

the main image. The posture and gesture of the icon, the presentation and adornment

of its body, presence of certain iconic attributes on or around the central image and

the addition of supernatural elements such as wings and fangs – all contribute to this

stunningly varied programme. To date few if any of these figures have been

identified, and I propose now to examine in detail one of the many goddesses in the

terracotta pantheon.

‘Goddess holding Fish’ – an icon:

Amongst the figures variously labelled as ‘mother goddess’ figurines, there exists

a ‘goddess’ , who is represented as having a slim, lithe body, a constricted waist and a

large face with thickly set features and wide-open eyes. Her hair is formed into an

elaborate bicornate coiffure, with a bulb in the centre. She wears a necklace, a

bejewelled belt across her waist to support the lower garment and a broad girdle

across her hips. She also displays other bijouterie such as large earplugs, a torque and

bracelets. The most significant attribute of this figure is a pair of fish, which she holds

in one of her hands. The fish are invariably secured on a leash that passes through

their mouths. As will be seen later, this feature becomes the main diagnostic element

in suggesting an attribution for the icon.

As an iconic representation, the fish-holding female has been found all over north

India in the realm of ‘Sunga’ terracotta art. It would be worthwhile to list those with a

definite provenance here –

1. Two plaques known from Chandraketugarh, West Bengal

2. Two from Kaushambi, of which one is in the Allahabad Museum and one in

the Bharat Kala Bhavan, Varanasi.

3. A mould for making plaques found at Kaushambi, now in the Allahabad

Museum.

4. Two plaques in the Mathura Museum found at Rani ki Mandi and Gajpasa,

both localities in Mathura city.

5. A plaque discussed by V. S. Agrawala (Agrawala $$) was found at

Ahichhatra.

6. Few fragments found in the excavations at Sonkh, out of which the excavation

report by Härtel illustrates one ($$). It is worth noting that these are the only

representatives of the ‘fish-holding goddess’ figurines with a stratigraphical

context – their level was assigned by Hartel as level 29, corresponding to the

‘early Mitra’ period, which is late 2nd

cent. BCE.

Apart from these there are several examples of the icon resting in museums

worldwide. Amongst those in Indian Museums, S.C. Kala ($$) lists examples that are

the State Museum, Lucknow, the National Museum, New Delhi and the Museum and

Picture Gallery, Baroda. He also mentions an example in the Musee Guimet in Paris.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston houses two plaques from the Coomaraswamy

collection while the Los Angeles County Museum and the Cleveland Museum each

hold one plaque with uncertain provenance.

Leaving aside the general attributes described above, many of these plaques show

some interesting individual variations. While in most cases the goddess holds the fish

in her right hand, in one instance (the Kaushambi plaque in Allahabad Museum) she

holds them in her left hand. This plaque is also unique from one more point of view –

it shows her with a female attendant, standing to her right. The position of her hand in

which she holds the fish also varies – in most cases the hand rests downwards with the

fish near her thigh, but in some cases it is flexed at the elbow (as in one of the

Chandraketugarh figurines) which raises the fish above her waist, thereby ascribing

them to a certain prominence. Some of the features correspond to those noted in other

‘mother goddess’ plaques of the ‘Sunga’ genre, while some are indeed unique and

therefore more interesting. Thus, the plaque in Bharat Kala Bhavan, Benares, shows

the goddess wearing a row of five hairpins shaped like weapons in her coiffure, while

one of the plaques from Chandraketugarh shows her wearing five sheaves of grain in

a similar way. Both these attributes are found in other representations of a goddess on

the terracottas. Another important variation is seen on the mould in the Allahabad

Museum, where the goddess holds a bunch of fruits in her other hand. A similar

depiction is seen on a plaque from the V.K. Kanoria collection in Patna, but in

contrast with the goddess on the mould, here the goddess is shown with both her

hands flexed at the elbows with the attributes raised to prominence. These are indeed

interesting variations. As will be seen later, a depiction of the same goddess in a form

other than terracotta, shows her holding a sharply bent sword raised above her head

in the other hand. The plaque in the L.A. County Museum appears to have a motif

made of dotted lines, shaped into a trough-like receptacle just below the fish.

Amongst non-iconic features, worthy of mention are two fragments in the

Coomaraswamy collection, which have some sort of a Brahmi inscription along the

fringe of the motif, next to the left ear of the goddess. It is read as aligned

perpendicular to the image. This is the sole instance of any of the ‘mother goddess’

plaques being inscribed and contributed to one of the first attempts in attribution of

the icon. Coomaraswamy read the inscription as Sudhaţa and opined that it may serve

a purpose in identifying the goddess ($$). When the icons were freshly re-examined

from their illustrations, it became quite clear that on one of them the existence of the

‘inscription’ as read by Coomaraswamy itself could be doubted, while on the other the

presence of the lingual consonant ‘T’ is not entirely free from doubt. The ascription of

the goddess based on these ‘inscriptions’ needs therefore to be kept in abeyance.

Identifying the icon – a critique of past attempts:

The next and most widely followed attempt in identifying the goddess came from the

pen of V. S. Agrawala. He identified her as ‘Vasudhara’, a Buddhist goddess who in

Mahayana iconography represents the consort of Jambhala (Agrawala 1939). His

identification was based on the Sādhanāmālā, a Buddhist text dealing with the

meditation formulas or ‘Dhyanas’ which describe the characteristics and rituals of a

number of deities in the developed Mahayana pantheon. Agrawala works backward

from the late iconographic details given in this text; he goes from images that belong

to the Gupta period, then to those from the Kushana period and finally he mentions

the fish-holding goddess of the ‘Sunga’ genre where he identifies her as ‘Vasudhara’,

commenting that although the texts that mention her as an emanation of the ‘Dhyani

Buddhas’ are of a later period, “in sculpture she is more ancient than either of her

spiritual fathers”. As diagnostic features that link the images from disparate periods,

he uses the attributes such as ears of corn, pair of vases and the fish depicted in the

images and conveniently treats them as transmutations of the same iconic programme.

To substantiate her ancient pedigree, he cited in concluding a verse from the

Atharvaveda.

Agrawala conclusions are fraught with difficulties. Firstly, as he himself agrees the

main source of evidence that forms the textual framework of his paper, viz. the

Buddhist scripture Sādhanāmālā is of a much later date than the images he is

attempting to attribute. Secondly, his approach in regarding the various attributes as

transmutable forms of each other is convoluted and fails to convince when one takes

into account the fact that the images not only come from different cultural periods but

may also represent quite different ideas and cultic or religious paradigms.

It is no wonder therefore that Agrawala’s identification of the goddess as ‘Vasudhara’

came under criticism from others, most notably from Moti Chandra ($$), S. C. Kala

($$) and Pratapaditya Pal ($$). Moti Chandra identified the goddess as an Indian

equivalent of the Iranian ‘Anahita’. He employed a slightly different methodology of

relying less on texts and more on comparative analysis between the iconographic

features of contemporary depictions across different cultures. He also narrowed the

anachronistic gap between the icon and the evidence framework and painted a much

wider canvass in terms of geographic extent. His attribution made use of the

connection of Anahita with water and saw an allusion to water in the fish the Indian

goddess holds. S. C. Kala did not offer an independent assessment but pointed out the

salient disadvantages of Agrawala’s argument, effectually siding with Moti Chandra’s

views to regard the goddess as an equivalent of Anahita. The most significant aspect

of Moti Chandra’s attribution was the choice of his methodology, wherein he ignored

the classic ‘material to textual’ route to a good extent and developed a cross-cultural

analysis of the most prominent feature of the image. But Moti Chandra’s expalanation

also fails to convince. There is nothing to substantiate a connection between the fish-

holding Indian goddess and Anahita as there is in the case of the Indo-Iranian

exchange in the figure of Nana/Ardoksho-Laxmi and Nana-Durga cults. Most

crucially, there is no visual evidence of an iconic connection between Anahita and the

chief iconic feature of the Indian goddess, the pair of fish. The connection envisaged

by Moti Chandra is entirely imaginative.

Pratapaditya Pal went the same way as Agrawala to name the icon as “the tutelary

goddess of fisherman, or ‘Revati’, goddess of the fishmongers”. He bases his

attribution on yet another text, the Kāṡyapasaṃhitā, a medical text from the Hindu

tradition..

The dates for this text are far from certain and at best, it can be contended that it dates

no earlier than the 3rd

-4th

cent. CE. It too postdates the period of the appearance of the

goddess with fish. Furthermore the arguments Pal makes on the basis of the text are

hardly convincing, essentially because the descriptions in the text are quite diffuse.

The relevant section in the text begins by describing Revati as a goddess whose

‘principal form’ is that of a ‘foetus stealer’, but also mentions she has many other

forms which could be divided into three types, pertaining to the Divine, Human and

Animal Worlds. She is also described as ‘universally dreaded’ and obviously this all

strongly indicates that she belongs to the class of ‘dreadful’ goddesses like

Bahuputrikā, Pūtanā, Sashthi etc., which demand propitiation as part of their worship.

The text further enlists ‘dozens of Revati’s forms’ and classifies them “ according to

various geographical regions and tribes covering practically the whole of India, and

according to various professional groups such as blacksmiths, carvers, carpenters,

potters, cobblers, garland-makers, tailors, washerwomen, cowherds, etc.”. Pal takes

his attributional leap from this description and concludes, “The fish-bearing goddess

may well represent either the tutelary goddess of fisherman or Revati, goddess of

fishmongers”. In his conclusion, Pal seems to have literally interpreted the main

iconic feature of the goddess, i.e. the pair of fish, as the fishing community’s goal. He

has also ignored the fact that as the text clubs several ‘dreadful’ goddesses together

into ‘forms of Revati’, it is probably an attempt aimed at cultic assimilation; if one

follows the text to its logical conclusion, all such goddesses must be considered to be

some form of ‘Revati’, losing their cultic and iconic individuality. Pal’s

identification is also not convincing.

One of the most crucial drawbacks of the methodologies employed by these three

scholars is that they fail to bridge the chronological gap between the sources upon

which the evidence framework is supported and the actual objects being studied. So

far, in the study of terracotta figurines there has been hardly any supportive or

comparative evidence adduced which belongs to the same cultural period as the

objects. This observation brings us to a crucial juncture in presenting this study,

where for the first time contemporary visual data is presented, in order to offer some

cogent suggestions for the identity of the fish-holding goddess.

The Icon on coins:

A comparable depiction of the goddess is found on contemporary coins, which are

dated to c.150-50 BCE. They conform to a numismatic phenomenon that characterises

the post-Maurya epoch – they belong to types which are specific to geographic

regions and denote a localised circulation. Obviously, the area that a coin would offer

for articulation or execution of the image is considerably smaller than that offered by

a terracotta plaque. It is also to be expected that not all the finer iconic details can be

seen on the coins. Thus in all numismatic depictions, the ornamentation seen on the

person of the deity, the details of her headgear etc. are not seen. However, the pair of

fish and the bicornate coiffure are the most discernable elements and they at once help

us to offer stylistic comparisons with the terracotta plaques. The emphasis laid on

these two aspects in what is otherwise a much stylised, almost schematically executed

icon shows their diagnostic potential for the audience towards which the consumption

of the icon was aimed at. The posture of the goddess as seen on coins and on the

plaques is identical – she stands frontally and the hand that holds the fish is either

straight or flexed at the elbow. The other hand rests on the hip. Coins offer a

significant insight into the spread of the imagery across the subcontinent – in fact they

take it far beyond the area from which the terracotta plaques have come. Thus, coins

showing the fish-holding goddess are encountered from Malwa, Vidarbha and as far

south as Karur in the Tamil hinterland. They make clear the important fact that the

cult of the ‘fish-holding goddess’ was indeed a truly pan-Indic phenomenon in the

early historic period.

There is yet another important piece of evidence coins have to offer and that rests in

one of the primarily numismatic elements - the inscriptions the coins carry. The coins

bearing the fish-holding goddess are of both inscribed and uninscribed types. Also as

another numismatic characteristic of the period they belong to dictates, they are

manufactured using both the single- and multiple die techniques. There is a tendency

amongst numismatists to regard those coins manufactured by multiple-die (also called

‘punch-marking’) technique as ‘earlier’ than those made by a double-die technique.

Although the statement is true from a general development of numismatic techniques

in ancient India, such a watertight chronological interpretation of manufacturing

techniques is often hazardous, as one would imagine that the dissemination of

technology does not happen in such a regular fashion. The period under discussion

shows this observation well justified, as the coins assigned to the 150-50 BCE time

bracket often show a multitude of manufacturing technologies, including single- and

multiple-die striking and casting. Before proceeding to demonstrate the utility of coins

in offering some pointers to the identity of the ‘fish-holding goddess’ it would be

appropriate to describe them.

The coins that are encountered in

Malwa are found chiefly in the

Betwa valley, at the ancient site of

Vidisha (PIC1). They are

inscribed die-struck pieces of

alloyed copper. The obverse of

these coins shows a large tree

within a railing, whereas the reverse bears the depiction of the fish-holding goddess

with a legend inscribed next to it, which is to be read as perpendicular to the goddess.

It reads Vasumitasa in early Brahmi characters, similar in palaeographic forms to

those seen in Asokan inscriptions. It obviously indicates that the coins are issues of

Vasumitra. The name of this ruler features in the Puranic genealogies of ‘Sunga’

rulers as the third ruler of the dynastic list. His mention as a ruler in Vidisha region in

the literary sources is substantiated well by the provenance of the coins. His

chronological placement is most certainly the post-Mauryan epoch of c. 150-50 BCE

and as such the coins neatly fit in with the dates ascribed to the ‘Sunga’ terracottas.

As such, there is no doubt that the depiction of the fish-holding goddess on these

coins is exactly contemporary with the figurines. The goddess seen on these coins

holds the pair of fish in her right hand, while her left hand is akimbo. Her bicornate

coiffure can be easily discerned.

The second instance where the goddess appears on coins has been recently reported

from Karur in Tamilnadu

(PIC2) - three specimens

were published by R.

Nagaswamy (Nagaswamy

1995: 35-36). Here again the

chronological placement of

the coins generally conforms

to the time-bracket, and

although the coins are uninscribed, the motifs seen on them indicate that they are

issues of the early Chera rulers, some of whom find mention in Tamil Sangam

literature. The most suggestive motif for this attribution is a lion, one of the dynastic

symbols of the Cheras, which appears on the reverse of the goddess. The goddess

motif, which occupies the obverse, shows an interesting associated symbolic

programme. She holds fish in her right hand, flexed at the elbow, thereby raising the

fish to prominence. Her left hand is also flexed at the elbow. She wears earplugs,

indicated by dots above her shoulder and has an elaborate coiffure, which in this case

is not bicornated. There is a laterally placed turtle beneath her feet. To her right, a

lotus in a railing can be seen, which rises above her head and droops towards her. A

vertical staff is seen on her left side, and there is a profile depiction of a rooster below

the staff.

Unfortunately, numismatists who reported the coins made grave errors in identifying

these motifs. All the three coins share the same provenance. Nagaswamy regarded the

turtle as a head of the Buffalo demon ‘Mahisha’ and related the icon to the ‘Durgā

Mahishamardinī’ motifs seen on Pallava temples of 6th

-7th

cent. CE. He therefore

identified the goddess as Durga. His identification was reconsidered by Shanmugam

& Raman, who rightly identified the turtle motif (Shanmugam & Raman 2001: 62-

64). But none of these researchers correctly identified the objects in the right hand of

the goddess as a pair of fish. Nagaswamy ignored the important attribute. Shanmugam

& Raman noted it, but went on a different tangent in identifying it. As they contended

that the goddess was standing on a turtle, they regarded her iconography similar to

that of the river goddess Yamuna, who is shown with a water pot in one of her hands.

They therefore concluded that the “two bag-like things” in her right hand could be a

water pot. They also identified the goddess as holding a ‘”big curved sword” in her

left hand. This again needs rectification – what they see as curved blade of the sword

is in fact a part of the goddess’ headgear. The right hand is raised in what seems to be

a gesture of reassurance (Abhayamudrā). A couple of extraneous dots are seen

between the hand and the headgear and they seem like the hilt of the sword, thereby

creating an illusion that the two are linked together. These dots may be a result of a

die-flaw or may have been intended to indicate some details of the coiffure. But they

most certainly do not form the hilt and there is no sword seen associated with the

goddess. Shanmugam and Raman regarded the lotus in the railing as a palm-tree and

hinted at it being the ‘tutelary tree of the Cheras’.

The motifs associated with the fish-holding goddess on the Chera coins from Karur

offer interesting comparisons with other contemporary images. The lotus is often

associated with many ‘mother goddess’ plaques of the ‘Sunga’ genre, both as an

ancillary symbol and as a major attribute. The rooster and the staff may indicate

connections with the ‘Skanda’ or ‘Kumara’ cult, who was popular in the period. Most

noteworthy are the instances where the ‘rooster and staff’ motif has been encountered

on sealings of individuals. Three such sealings have been published from the sites of

Paithan, Kondapur and Kaundinyapur (Gupta 1991: 138-143), all located in the

Deccan and belonging to the same cultural period as the terracotta figurines and coins

being discussed. Incontrovertible contemporary evidence for ‘Skanda/Kumara’

worship may also be adduced from the Nanaghat inscription of the Satavahana Queen

Naganika, which mentions Kumara as one of the deities being invoked at its

beginning (Lueders 1912: no. 1112). The Karur coins therefore provide evidence of

not one, but two deities whose worship was spread out across the sub continent at this

early period.

The third and very important instance of the ‘fish-holding’ goddess appearing on

coins is from the region of Vidarbha. Here she appears on two different series of coins

– one being a copper punch-marked issue (PIC3) and

the other consisting of bronze die-struck ones. The

copper punch-marked coin is uninscribed and shows

her as one of the punches. The other punches on the

coin are a Nandipada symbol, an elephant, an

‘Ujjain’ symbol and a composite symbol consisting

of a Damaru and a triangle-headed standard. All the

symbols are consistent with what we know from the cultural period under discussion,

and the manufacturing technique of the coin helps us to confirm its placement in the

2nd

-1st cent BCE. The goddess seen in the punch shows prominent bicornate coiffure

and holds the fish in her partially outstretched right hand, the left hand resting on her

hip.

The die-struck coins belong to a regiospecific series from Vidarbha that has been

ascribed to the early Satavahanas

(Bhandare 1999: 157-159). The first

type of these coins to depict the goddess

consists of uninscribed rectangular

coins (PIC4). On obverse they have an

elephant marching to right on the obverse, with an upright arrow placed on its back,

flanked by other ‘auspicious’ symbols. The goddess appears on the reverse – in her

form she is comparable to her depiction as seen on the copper punch-marked coin,

with exactly the same placement of attributional elements such as the coiffure and the

pair of fish Coins of this type are manufactured from blanks that are cut from a sheet

and then struck between a pair of dies.

The other two types of bronze die-struck coins are broadly similar to the type just

described, but unlike it, they are struck using blanks that are manufactured by casting.

This is evident from the bevelled edges these coins have. There are two varieties here

– the first consists of

uninscribed coins (PIC5) which

show the depictions of elephant

and the ‘goddess with fish’ very

similar what has just been

described. Coins of the second

variety, however, show one

minor and one major variation

(PIC6, PIC7). The minor variation

is that we see an ‘Ujjain’ symbol

instead of the vertical arrow on

the elephant’s back, the rest of the

symbolic programme being the

same. The major variation comes

in form of a legend on the reverse

and this is what gives us the most

suggestive clue about the identity

of the ‘fish-holding’ goddess.

The legend appears on the right of

the goddess, just above her outstretched hand holding the pair of fish and has to be

read in a perpendicular alignment to the motif. In early Brahmi characters it clearly

reads ‘BÉŅĀ’, which is the name of a river in Vidarbha. The fact that the legend does

not have any suffix indicates that it denotes the identity of the goddess and not an

issuing authority. The ‘fish-holding’ goddess quite clearly represents the river on

these coins. Presently the river is called ‘Wainganga’. It traverses the Eastern

Vidarbha region and enters Andhra Pradesh, forming the South-eastern boundary of

Maharashtra State. Phonetic remnants of her original Prakrit name are reflected in

‘Wain’, which forms a part of her name, ‘W’ and ‘B’ being freely interchangeable

consonants.

Yet another type of coin with the fish-holding goddess has recently come to light

(PIC8). It is made of an

alloy, possibly bronze

with lead, and it is said

to have been found in

the East Marathwada –

West Vidarbha region

of Maharashtra. Its

fabric and other characteristics – such as it being die-struck, having a multiplicity of

motifs on both sides and the absence of an inscription – allude very clearly to its

chronological placement in the immediate pre-Satavahana period (c. 150-100 BC). It

thus belongs to the category known to numismatists as ‘uninscribed die-struck coins

of the post-Mauryan epoch’. The goddess is seen on the obverse executed in a manner

similar to ‘Bena’, but here she stands on the top of a ‘Makara’, depicted as a chimera

having an elephant’s head and front legs, and the hind portion composed of a fish,

ending in a triangular tail. Such depictions of a Makara are also seen on other coins of

the ‘uninscribed die-struck’ kind, from other region-specific areas like Ujjain (Kothari

2006: 71, no. RB7) (PIC9) Parts of the motif, notably the

head of the goddess and also the trunk of the elephant have

been truncated beyond the flan of the coin. Other aquatic

creatures like two fish and turtles surround the icon.

The estuarine significance of this imagery is quite evident

and needs no further elaboration. The motif seen on this

coin broadly corroborates features of the icon seen on the

Karur coin, where the goddess stands on a turtle. It is a well-

known iconographic fact that the turtle and the Makara later

came to be associated with two prominent estuarine icons,

namely the Yamuna and the Ganga, where these animals become ‘codified’ as their

Vahanas or ‘vehicles’.

Apart from Vidarbha,

Tamil Nadu and East

Malwa, the icon of ‘fish-

holding’ goddess is also

found on coins from

regions such as West

Malwa (Ujjain) (PIC10)

and Narmada Valley

(PIC11). On the Ujjain

coin, the icon is very much

like the depictions we have

discussed – standing frontal

with the left hand on the hip

while the right extending

downwards holding the pair

of fish. On the coin from Narmada Valley, she is represented more schematically with

only one fish appearing below her outstretched right hand.

In case of one coin of the city-state

of Tripuri from the British Museum

collection (PIC12), we find the

motif of ‘pair of fish-on-string’ used

as a counter-marking device, most

likely indicating a circulatory and/or

a political interface. The device is so similar to the chief attribute of the ‘fish-holding’

goddess that its employment here is undoubtedly a synoptic reference to the icon.

The Historicity of Bena:

V. V. Mirashi has discussed the historicity of ‘Bena’, its identification with the

present-day Wainganga and some associated problems (Mirashi 1977: 203-212;

Mirashi 1979: [195]-[197]). Her earliest mention is in the inscription of Kharavela,

where he boasts that in the second year of his reign he sent “a strong army of horses,

chariots, elephants and soldiers to the West without even thinking of Satakarni. When

the army reached the Kanha-Bena River, it threatened the people of Asikanagara”.

There are three clues in this line that have important bearings on the identification of

Bena and substantiate the attribution. One is the mention of Satakarni who was a

Satavahana ruler, which indicates the date of the inscription itself. We do not need to

go into the finer details of the date of Kharavela, which is one of the most perplexing

problems of ancient Indian chronology. Suffice it would to say that it indicates the

close contemporaneity of the inscriptional mention of the river Bena with her

numismatic depiction, which inter alia infers that we are adducing evidence from the

same time bracket (150-50 BCE) as that of the ‘Sunga’ terracotta figurines. Secondly,

the inscription locates the river ‘to the West’ of Kharavela’s kingdom, i.e. Kalinga

(Orissa). This conforms to the geographic location of Vidarbha. The fact that the river

is referred to as ‘Kanha-Bena’ reflects an alternative conjugate name, which denotes

the river in confluence with another river in the region, which even today is called

‘Kanhan’.

Mirashi’s contention about the location of ‘Kanha-Bena’ has been recently

corroborated by the important find of a seal of the city of ‘Asikanagara’ in the

excavations at Adam, which bears an upright arrow in a railing surrounded by a

Brahmi legend Asika Janapadasa (Nath 1990: 87-90). The fact that Adam is situated

on the confluence of Kanhan and ‘Bena’, i.e. Wainganga strongly corroborates the

inscriptional mention. We may recall here that the ‘upright arrow’ motif also occurs

on uninscribed and inscribed coins from Vidarbha region that depict the ‘goddess with

fish’ icon (vide supra).

There are other mentions of ‘Bena’ in Satavahana epigraphs – Gautamiputra Satakarni

calls himself ‘Benākatakaswāmi’ (‘Lord of the Bena valley’) in his inscription at

Nasik dated in his 18th

regnal year. In another inscription at Nasik, the Satavahana

ruler Vasishthiputra Pulumavi, ordered his minister Sivakhadila to note the donation

of a village named ‘Shalmalipadra’ towards the welfare of monks from the Bena

valley, resident in the monastery at Nasik. This inscription is dated in his 19th

regnal

year. These inscriptions are to be placed in 1st-2

nd cent. CE following recent advances

on Satavahana chronology. The mention of Bena and her valley as an administrative

unit continues in the Vakataka period, where a copper plate grant refers to it as

Benākārpārabhoga (‘the district comprising of both banks of Bena’).

Mirashi (Mirashi 1977: op. cit.) lists salient mentions of the Vena / Bena River in

sources such as the Mahabharata and the Sanskrit play Mŗtchhakatika. In the former,

it features in the Vana Parva (The Book of the Forest) where a sage (Rsi) named

Pulastya describes holy places and ‘fords’ (Teerthas) in the region to the banished

Pandava brothers. In Mŗtchhakatika, the hero Charudatta is assigned the kingdom of

Kushāvati by his friend Aryaka after the latter stages a coup d’état in Ujjayini. The

location of this city is indicated by its presence ‘on the banks of Vena’. Mirashi has

identified the ancient site of Pauni in Vidarbha as the ‘Kushāvati’ mentioned in the

play (Mirashi 1979: op. cit.) .

The attributes of the icon and their meaning:

From the foregoing discussion it becomes evident that the icon of ‘fish-holding’

goddess represents a river. Its associated symbolism helps to substantiate this

ascription. The facts that she holds a pair of fish and stands on the turtle, or a Makara,

definitely are consistent with a river goddess. It is worth noting that all the sites from

which the fish-holding goddess plaques as well as coins come have strong estuarine

connections. They are sites located on riverbanks and it only makes sense that the

river must have played a crucial role in their sustenance.

It is also worth addressing the question of the attributes of the goddess here. Almost

all previous contributions on the subject have treated the pair of fish as the main

attribute of the goddess and attempted to offer explanations for its occurrence It is

readily recognised that the pair of fish as a symbol enjoyed a much wider circulation

than the goddess itself – it is one of the eight ‘auspicious symbols’ (Ashtamangala),

which feature in Hindu, Buddhist and Jaina religious imagery. It is also a ‘mark of

greatness’ (Mahapurushalaksana) and denotes completeness, fertility and plenitude.

However, it must be acknowledged that in the context of the icon being discussed;

only certain of these descriptions may apply.

The possibility that this icon represents a river, as contemporary coins have indicated,

forces us to question certain methodological aspects of the enquiry that previous

researchers have engaged in. While attempting to contextualise the major attribute of

the icon, it is important to recognise its specific historical and geographical context as

well. Thus, an attribute like a wheel (the Chakra) may have very different

implications, depending on its time and place, and attempts to draw too much from a

common cultural pool risk ignoring the specific cultural and religious context of the

symbol. This has certainly been the case thus far with attempts to identify the fish of

the fish goddess. Only an incontrovertible inscriptional detail has settled the question,

and here the contribution of the study of coins has been essential.

In all likelihood, the association of the fish with a river goddess is connected to the

river as a source of abundance. Water has been known as the ‘fertile’ principle ever

since the Vedic times, existing before all creation began. The fish breed with no

visible reproductive acts or mating rites, they seem to be sui generis and multiply in

water. This seems to contribute to the ‘fertility’ connotation fish may have had in

ancient times.

It is worthwhile to compare the icon in terms of its attribute as well as from a

viewpoint of numismatic design with the only other representation of a river divinity

seen on coins – the representation of the river god ‘Oaksho’ (skt. Vakshu = the river

Oxus) as seen on a Kushana gold Dinar from the British Museum collection (PIC13).

He is shown holding a fish in his hand with his name written in exergue, much similar

to the depiction of Bena. Here it is noteworthy that Oaksho carries only one fish in his

hands – conceivably because being a male divinity the procreative aspects of the

jugate fish attribute are not applicable in his case. The depiction of Oaksho therefore

helps to substantiate the equation forwarded above and justifies the interpretation of

the fish as an indication of the powerful fertility of the river, something that the pair

of fish only further accentuates in the hands of the river goddess.

Epilogue:

In this essay I have followed a different methodology from my predecessors. I have

ignored the traditional pathway of fitting material evidence into a framework yielded

by literary sources, many of which are much later than the objects I am studying.

Instead suggestions are made through a comparative study of different types of

material evidence. In this attempt the chronological gap between the source of

evidence and the object under scrutiny has been bridged. It may be hoped that further

study of the coins of the early period will continue to enrich our understanding of the

imagery on the early historic terracottas.

(I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Drs. Naman Ahuja and Madhuvanti

Ghosh for their comments and suggestions. Naman was kind to share information

from his unpublished PhD thesis and provide certain key images. Without their help

this study would have remained incomplete. Thanks are also due to M/s Wilfried

Pieper of Geilenkirchen, Germany; Lance Dane, Mumbai, India; Prashant Kulkarni,

Nagpur, India; Naresh Chamedia, Yavatmal, India and J P Goenka, Mumbai/Kolkata,

India, for allowing me the access to study and publish coins from their collections.

Coins from institutional collections include those from the Dept of Coins and Medals,

The British Museum and thanks are due to Joe Cribb, the Keeper of the Department.

Images have been reproduced courtesy the Trustees of The British Museum. Coins

from the Heberden Coin Room, Ashmolean Museum’s collection are reproduced

courtesy the Visitors of the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford).

Appendix

While this paper focuses on only one of the icons seen amongst a broad range of such

representations seen on the so-called ‘Sunga’ terracotta plaques, it will be worthwhile

to present some numismatic data that comes from the same chronological bracket and

shows a range of iconic depictions that broadly corroborate those seen in the

terracotta genre. Shown below are images of icons, seen on coins, most of which

conform to the ‘uninscribed post-Mauryan die-struck’ category. I will describe and

locate the coin in its regio-specific context in each case, while describing the icon.

Motifs such as the ‘Gajalakshmi’ are well-known from coins and I will not include

them here. For a majority of icons, identity remains a mystery and would need further

research to decode. Some of the coins have been previously published in numismatic

literature and references are given. Others remain unpublished and are being brought

to light here for the first time.

1. Silver punch-marked

coins of the ‘archaic’

series from Saurashtra

(Rajgor 2001: 68, type

411c) – These three

coins bear the figure of a goddess seated in a ‘yogic’ posture, with legs folded

inwards. She wears the characteristic coiffure and large ear-rings. Her hands are

flexed at elbows and come together in what appears to be a gesture of salutation

(Namaskāra). Dated to the 3rd

century BC, these are by far the earliest dateable

examples of any divine form in India. As such their importance for the study of Indian

Art, iconography and social history is unparalleled.

2. This is an uninscribed cast copper coin from the Kaushambi region. On obverse we

see two anthropomorphic figures, the one on the right of which is clearly a goddess

with a schematically

indicated bicornate

coiffure. She carries a

battle-axe or Parasu in her

right hand. Standing

opposite to her is a male

figure, wearing a loin cloth

and having his hair tied in

a knot above his head. He holds up a stick in his left hand. Other symbols seen on this

side are a Nandyāvarta in the centre, a wheel at bottom left and a thunderbolt at

bottom right. The association of symbols and anthropomorphic imagery suggests that

this is a sort of a ‘sacred complex’.

On the reverse we see a melange of symbols – a bull, a tree within a railing, an

‘Ujjain’ symbol and a triangle-headed standard or ‘banner’ (dhwaja). Compare with

very similar assortment of symbols on the reverse of the ‘goddess with fish’ coin from

Vidarbha described above (PIC8).

3. An uninscribed die-struck

lead coin said to have been

found at Kaushambi. Here we see the goddess standing frontally with arms rested on

either side of her waist. She wears a semi-circular headgear and very prominent

ornaments like ear-plugs and arm-bands. Below her left hand is a disc-shaped device,

probably at attribute. She is flanked by a male figure in a loin cloth holding aloft a

stick, much like on the coin described above.

The reverse shows a seated bull, with one of his fore legs extended in a ‘Nandi’-like

manner.

4. A uniface die-struck coin attributed

to the city-state of Mahismati, on the

banks of the Narmada. S K Bhatt

published a similar coin that he

contends to be struck on the back of a

‘city-state’ issue of Mahismati (Bhatt

1988). Here we see a standing goddess

with right hand raised near to her face.

In all probability she is touching the

ornament in her right earlobe, a gesture seen on some of the terracotta plaques. She

wears her hair in multiple buns, has bangles in her arms and wears a garment below

her waist, the drape of which is seen flowing past her thigh. Associated with her is a

range of symbols, such as a ‘three-arched hill with a crescent’ and a triangle-headed

standard, amongst other unclear or not readily identifiable ones. A legend in early

Brahmi characters appears engraved upside down next to the goddess’s left leg. Bhatt

reads its as ‘Madamae’, but it is evidently ‘Madasmati’ or ‘Madasvati’ as seen from

the image appended here. The legend could be attributional and the ‘…mati/vati’-

ending could mean that it either describes the goddess or the issuing authority. If it is

the former case this may prove to be yet another instance where the identity of the

icon may be ascertained through a coin inscription. However, what

‘Madasmati’/’Madasvati’ means requires to be decoded.

5. Uniface uninscribed die-struck coin of Taxila

region (Alan 1936: cxxxiii, 221, pl. XXXII).

This copper coin shows the standing figure of a

goddess, with a head-dress that in all probability ends in a bun or a plait behind her

back. She holds a flower bud, most likely a lotus, in her right hand. On either side she

is flanked by ‘hill’ symbols – the on the left is composed of six pellets, while the one

on the right is a typical ‘three-arched hill with crescent’.

6. Coin of the ‘Rajanya’ Janapada from Hoshiarpur district, Punjab (Alan 1936: cxxii-

cxxiii; 210-212, pl. XXIX). On obverse of this coin, an attributive legend in Brahmi

characters is seen that reads

Rājaña Janapadasa. Below the

legend, is placed the figure of a

goddess. A semicircular line

covers her head – it may be a

headgear or a form of coiffure.

She has wide hips, however, her

breasts are conspicuously absent, even in a schematic representation. She has one of

her hands on her hip, while in the other hand she holds a round object, perhaps a ball.

The reverse shows a standing bull enclosed in a rayed circle.

In Alan’s contention, this is a form of Lakshmi, but Devendra Handa has identified

her to be ‘Rajinidevi’ on basis of ethno-archaeological observations (Handa 2007:

101).

7. Coin of Gomitra, a ruler of

Mathura (Alan 1936: cix, 171,

pl. XXV). Here the goddess

motif is seen on both sides.

On obverse, she stands just

below the Brahmi legend

Gomitasa. She has an object,

most likely a flower, in her right hand which she holds aloft. There is another,

unidentified object on her left shoulder. Below her is the representation of a river or

pond, teeming with fishes. She is flanked on the right by an ‘Ujjain’ symbol and a

Srivatsa, while to the left a tree with horizontal branches and leaves emanating out of

them is seen.

On the reverse, an interesting depiction composed of three elephants is seen. Of these

one is facing, while the other two stand in profile with their heads flanking the one in

the centre. Three figures ride these beasts – the one in the centre quite clearly has a

bicornate coiffure. Judging by the schematically illustrated pellets, it would not be

unreasonable to conclude that the figures riding the elephants on the sides also sport a

similar headdress. A very similar depiction of a female deity on a seemingly three-

headed elephant is seen on copper coins of the Indo-Scythian king Azilises (c. 70-

56BC) (Senior 2001: 6, issue 40)

8. A uniface uninscribed

lead coin, attributed to the

Satavahanas. A goddess

with a schematically

illustrated headdress sits on

a T-shaped pedestal. She has

her left hand on the hip, while the right hand extends outwards, possibly in the gesture

of reassurance (abhayamudra). Coins like these have been found in Satavahana levels

in the excavations at Bhokardan (Deo & Gupte 1974).

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