page_title: Art of Mathura
section_title: Simple reliefs (circa 150-100 BCE)
hierarchical_section_title: Art of Mathura / Early history / Early stone sculpture in Mathura (180-70 BCE) / Simple reliefs (circa 150-100 BCE)
caption_attribution_description: English: Mehrauli Yakshi, 150 BCE, Mathura. Maurya, Shunga and Satavahana Arts Gallery, India National Museum, New Delhi. Complete indexed photo collection at WorldHistoryPics.com.
context_page_description: The Art of Mathura refers to a particular school of Indian art, almost entirely surviving in the form of sculpture, starting in the 2nd century BCE, which centered on the city of Mathura, in central northern India, during a period in which Buddhism, Jainism together with Hinduism flourished in India. Mathura "was the first artistic center to produce devotional icons for all the three faiths", and the pre-eminent center of religious artistic expression in India at least until the Gupta period, and was influential throughout the sub-continent.
  Chronologically, Mathuran sculpture becomes prominent after Mauryan art, the art of the Mauryan Empire. It is said to represent a "sharp break" with the previous Mauryan style, either in scale, material or style. Mathura became India's most important artistic production center from the second century BCE, with its highly recognizable red sandstone statues being admired and exported all over India.
context_section_description: Various reliefs in a style similar to those of Bharhut or Sanchi Stupa No. 2 can be found in Mathura, dating to approximately 150-100 BCE. A dedicatory inscription by Dhanabhuti at Mathura records the donation of railings and a gateway to the Buddhists samgha. It is now lost. The Dhanabhuti in the Mathura inscription could be the same person as King Dhanabhuti in the Bharhut inscription, about 322 kilometers away, and this could suggest some cultural, religious and artistic connection between the two areas. Reliefs are usually rather simple and consist in medallions on railings or balusters, structural elements of stone barriers or "vedikas" probably established around large stupas which have not remained to this day.
  The "Mehrauli Yakshi", one of the highest quality work among early sculpture, was found in Mehrauli in the cultural area of Mathura. The high-relief and skillfully carved sculpture shows a female nature divinity, called a Yakshini, holding on the branches of a tree in the Salabhanjika pose, with a long double braid of hair descending down to the girdle. The sculpture probably used to adorn the railing of a sacred site, such as a Stupa. She is dated to 150 BCE, and prefigures by more than a century the Salabhanjika Yakshinis of Sanchi. It is at the same time one of the most artistically beautiful and earliest of the Yakshi sculptures, with detailed patterning contrasting with the smoothness of the skin, standing at the beginning of a long tradition of Yashi sculptures in Mathura and India as a whole. There are many similarities with the Yakshis found in Bharhut, although the Mehrauli Yakshi has rounder volumes, characteristic of the Mathura style and technical proficiency in carving.
  Some other sculpted figures also are dated to circa 150 BCE, due to their similarity with equivalent figures in Bharhut. This is the case of a male Chauri-bearer with its sharp lines and stiff expression, held at the Mathura Museum. Sir John Marshall considered the early reliefs of Mathura and Bharhut as part of the same tradition, calling it the "Bharhut-Mathura School", while the reliefs of Sanchi were a second tradition, calling it the "Malwa School of Sanchi".
caption: The "Mehrauli Yakshi", dated to 150 BCE, Mathura.[73][74]
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