Description
Lesser evolved temples had at least their entrances, the main as well as those of the sanctums, adorned with the statues of these celestial beings. This celestial nymph, reproduced here in brass, is obviously one from the clan of gandharvas, although the caster has borrowed elements of beauty and facial features from an apsara and has created his figure by blending the both. The dwarapala statues, flanking the temple doors could be either male or female. The male figures are known as dwarapala while the female as Dwara-devis. The male, almost without exception, stood in tribhanga-mudra, that is, a posture in which a figure had three curves. The female figures had rhythm blended in their form, but it only had some kind of semblance of a dance mode. A lesser evolved temple had the dwarapala or dwara-devi figures flanking on both sides of its doorjambs only towards its lower part, but the more evolved ones had two, three or even more dwarapala pairs, contained in vertically rising recessed niches. The dwarapala figures at the lower end invariably held in their hand standards, which the tradition assigned to the enshrining deity. This standard was substituted by a chanwara often at upper levels but sometimes also at the lower level. The dwara-devis rarely held a chanwara. They stood either with folded hands and in a semi-dance mode, as in this statue, or in a fully accomplished dance posture.
