This exceptionally ornate brass statue, sublimity enshrining the face of the represented figure, and rhythm, wreathed into her form – into every curve and gesture of her parts, an icon usually classed as Deepalakshmi in Indian iconographic tradition, represents a young woman holding in her hands a large lamp.
In ancient and medieval India, and even till recent times, transporting light in the form of lit lamps was a regular activity performed invariably by women, a maid or a household, at a palace or a hut.
Held close to the bosom and often protected from winds by a part of one’s ensemble the light centring and reflecting on the face of the courier always multiplied its glow: the sensuous beauty of the young spouse and the divine aura on the mother’s face.
A local version of Rama-katha alludes to Anasuya, the wife of the known sage Atri, emerging from her hut with a lit lamp in hands when around the evening Rama, Sita and Lakshmana reach Atri’s hermitage. The tradition contends that the light that Sita saw reflecting in the divine eyes of mother Anasuya was Sita’s light for ever and whenever she recalled it, darkness illuminated with light. Obviously, in Indian context light always had divine dimensions, and even when its courier was a maid possessed of sensuous beauty, she was seen as having an amount of divinity as had an enlightening goddess and commanded respect.
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