Salabhanjika Nepal ca 13° century or earlier... Lot 47

Salabhanjika Nepal ca 13° century or earlier Wood. H. 151 cm Superb armpit carving of a female deity grasping a tree branch with her right hand while standing on the head of a person sitting on a rock. This remarkable sculpture represents the Nepalese version of the Indian Salabhanjika (..labhañjik.), (the one who breaks the branch of the tree ..la). In this context, the Salabhanjika is also a spirit associated with nature and the tree (yakshi) who reaches for the fruits or fleurs in the upper branches of the tree while imposing the attitude of triple inflexion (tribhanga) on her body. Her crossed legs are supported by a Yaksha or Yakshi, her gender being tricky to interpret, a bearded man with developed breasts or a woman with goi.tre. This iconography of the Salabhanjika or "yakshi with a tree" goes back almost to the origins of sacred stone architecture in India, since such divinities sculpted on pillars marked out the vedika decoration of the Bharhut stupa in Madhya Pradesh as early as the second century BC. It is conceivable that those supporting the jambs of the East Torana of Sanchi, (which would have been erected at the time of Satakarni I of the Satavahana, i.e. in the first century CE) could be considered as archetypes also used then in the now extinct wooden architecture. The earliest evidence of such wooden architecture has survived only in the Himalayan regions, where both in Nepal and in the Kullu district of Himachal-Pradesh, wooden representations of Salabhanjika have recently been dated to around the seventh century. The iconography of these ancient deities associated with nature merged in a form of syncretism with that of Queen Mâyâ, who near Lumbini is said to have been attracted to a fleuri grove where she assumed the same pose by ac.cropping herself to a branch of sal to give birth to the Buddha, who is said to have emerged from her flanc. Armpits of this type are generally dated to around the thirteenth century, but Mary Shepherd Slusser's work "Seeing, Rather Than Looking At, Nepalese Art" https://www.asianart.com/articles/slusser-wood/index.html accompanied by Carbon14 analysis has shown that some could be dated to the eighth or ninth centuries. Our Salabhanjika's hairstyle, organized in two lateral buns separated by a diadem with a large central finial, can be seen on metal or stone sculptures generally attributed to the period from the tenth to the thirteenth century. Provenance: - Former French private collection - Sale by Maître Siboni (Sceaux) on 29 March 2015 lot 125