Browse Archive Items (2 total)

Ardhanarisvara, hermaphrodite, Half god and half goddess facing opposite directions

Description: Reflecting the Ardhanarisvara concept is this bronze, shown with the male and female halves facing opposite directions. It was originally found in a Buddhist temple at Veragala in the Anuradhapura district, Sri Lanka, The statue exhibited in the Colombo National Museum, may belong to the Anuradhapura period.
Contributor: Co-Author: Seneviratna, Harsha

Ardhanarisvara, hermaphrodite, Half god and half goddess

Description: The Ardhanarisvara, half god and half goddess is an expression in art of the essential unity of the male and female in cosmic terms. Belonging to this class of images is an Ardhanari bronze discovered at the Abhayagiri Vihare, Sri Lanka, during excavations connected with the Cultural Triangle Project in 1982. The image is vertically divided into a male on the left and a female half on the right which is unusual. Judging from a tubular knob at the back, it seems to have fitted into a socket in…
Contributor: Co-Author: Seneviratna, Harsha