124 Ellen Raven THE YAK-TAIL’S FLYWHISK (CHAMARA) FLYWHISK On entering the Patna Museum, one is greeted by the stunning image of a majestic lady carved life-size from buff, highly polished sandstone. She is known as the Didarganj ‘yakshï or ‘chaurie-bearer’ (fig. I).1 Proudly she faces us, a faint smile on her lips. The near-symmetry of her body stance is emphasized by carefully carved ornaments, full breasts, clothing details and a many-stranded girdle. She holds a flywhisk with a short handle over her right shoulder; her left hand, now broken off, must once have rested on her left hip. Ever since its recovery, this sculpture has defied final attribution to a specific period of India’s early sculptural art - informed estimates vary from the Maurya period (3rd century BC) up to even as late as the post-Gupta YAK-TAIL'S period (circa 700 AD).2 The date of her manufacture, however, is not my present concern. It is the flywhisk that interests me. Attendants with flywhisks THE A flywhisk is a common enough attribute for attending figures, mentioned occasionally in tales and depicted in sculpture and painting. A special kind, the white flywhisk (chamara, with a long first a) is made from the bushy tail of a yak.3 In ancient days its use was a prerogative of royalty and the divine, and the royal chamara was regarded as almost as important as the white umbrella of state.4 Exquisite specimens of such chamaras of the mightiest of mighty, made of gold and sometimes enamelled and set with precious stones, survive from Mughal period courts and may be traced among the heirlooms of former princely families.5 A king, mortal or mythic, would arrange for courtiers to stand by in attendance and wave a white flywhisk to signal his superior status and express reverence.6 Thus a nagaraja (a Serpent King), depicted in a medallion from the railing at the Bharhut stapa (2nd century BC), is flanked by two naginis (female serpents), each raising a flywhisk towards their king (fig. 2). The triad configuration of a figure of authority flanked by attending figures with a chamara, a lotus or a garland was one of the most favoured compositions in the visual vocabulary of the Indian sculptor. A superbly successful use of the theme on the roof of the Shiva Temple at Bhumara (Madhya Pradesh), datable to the 5th century AD, shows Yama, King of the Underworld, seated on his throne. He brandishes a rajadanda, the rod of punishment symbolizing the rule of force. Yama is flanked by two lovely ladies, each with a chamara draped over her shoulder (fig. 3). Even though the chamara is among the first attributes to be applied in the iconographic sign language of the early Historie period (circa 300 BC - 300 AD), it seems to have attracted limited art historical study,7 perhaps because a flywhisk almost automatically leads one to think in terms of subservience. Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 02:13:07PM As an attendant’s attribute it seems self-explanatory; why explain the via free access Figure i (left) obvious? However, it is not as straightforward and simple as that, as I shall Yakshini holding a demonstrate through the Didarganj chauri-bearer and a few related images. chamara, Didarganj, now Patna Museum, polished sandstone, Takshinis' and Jyakshasr h. 162,5 cm. excluding base, possibly When E.H.C. Walsh and D.B. Spooner came to inspect the reported find at c. i5* cent. AD. Didarganj, they found that local villagers had already raised a bamboo Photograph courtesy canopy over the image and had started worshiping her.8 Because of the American Committee of flywhisk, Spooner assumed the lady to have been an attendant of a divine or Southern Asian Art, slide no. 9121 royal figure and he argued to the locals that the image did not represent a ‘member of the Hindu pantheon’. Walsh and Spooner thus ‘dislodged the yakshi from her incipient temple (to) relocate her in their own recently Figure 2 founded ... Patna Museum.’9 Nagaraja with female In his first description of the new find, Spooner made a passing reference to snake attendants waving flywhisks, 'two colossi from Patna’, kept in the Indian Museum in Calcutta, as offering Bharhut stupa, now the closest comparison in terms of proportions.10 What Spooner failed to Indian Museum, point out is that the headless male of the Patna pair in the Indian Museum Kolkata, sandstone, likewise holds a chamara in his right hand (fig. 4).11 More importantly, the 2nd cent. BC. Patna image carries a label inscription across the scarf on his left shoulder, Photograph courtesy Friends of the Kern identifying him as a yaksha (Prakrit yakho), probably by the name of Institute, no. 36.376 Sa(r?)vata namdi. Yakshas and yakshinis (= yakshis) are among the most intriguing actors in the South Asian mythic arena. The term yaksha* is encountered as early as in the Vedas, around the turn of the lst millennium BC. It indicates ‘something wonderful or terrible’. In the course of history yakshas acquire specific names Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 02:13:07PM and forms, and become the subject of tales right across religious boundaries.via free access 126 Figure 3 (left) They are feared and loved, regarded as wonderful and supernatural, but at King Yama with female the same time potentially dangerous. The power that induces such awe is the attendants carrying yaksha's control over the fecundity of nature, specifically that of water and chamaras, in a vegetation. Perhaps secondarily, they are also seen as guardians of the riches chandrashala (decorative dormer of the earth. window) of the Shiva Around these pivotal concepts developed a mythology and an iconography Temple, Bhumara (MP), that accommodate yakshas looking and acting like powerful gods, either sandstone, w. c. 76 cm., benign or fearful. Others look like unbelievably strong dwarfs able to lift h. c. 67 cm. (outside enormous weights above their heads.12 measurements), end of the 5th cent AD. In Indian art yakshas come in many guises, in which sheer physical power Photograph courtesy and the fertility of nature are reflected in varying ways and degrees. An Friends of the Kem imposing frontality, life-size or even over life-size proportions, bulkiness in Institute, no. 40.336 the men and prominent breasts and hips in the females are part of the early code. A standing posture with the right hand raised and the left arm akimbo Figure 4 Yaksha with chamara, are other such features. ‘Sometimes the right hand holds a flower, or cauri, or Patna, now Indian weapon; sometimes the left grasps the robe, or holds a flask, but the position Museum, Kolkata, acc. of the arms is constant', writes Coomaraswamy.13 no. Pi, polished Yakshas make ideal guardians for any sacred precinct, and the iconography sandstone, h. 162 cm., of guardians at gates and temple entrances (dvarapalas) in fact goes straight c. 1* cent AD. Photograph after back to that of yakshas in similar roles. We should not think in terms of Chanda 1927, pl. 4a-b ‘subservience’ when visualizing yakshas and yakshis guarding the entrances to cities, temples, stupa and monasteries. It is exactly because of their power, and the awe and respect that they inspire, that we find them there. And it is mostly for the same reason that we find them depicted as ‘guarding' the Buddha or the Jina - not necessarily in token of subservience, but more likely as creators and guardians of a sacred and protected space around the seated figure.14 Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 02:13:07PM via free access 127 To be or not to be As for the now headless colossus from Patna, some scholars have read the name of an ancient king in the legend across the scarf on the left shoulder,15 but they feit uneasy about the flywhisk attribute. On the basis of the label, most scholars accept that the Patna male represents a yaksha. A few still assume that he is only an attendant, thus apparently ignoring the label.16 In view of the similarities in iconography and proportions between the Patna yakshas and the Didarganj lady, most scholars have since accepted that she indeed represents a yakshini. Some are still not convinced, again because of the flywhisk. Thus Susan Huntington argues that the chamara ‘symbolizes her subservient role in the presence of a highly respected individual who might have been a religious or secular leader... She has none of the usual accoutrements of a yaksi and clearly is an attendant.’17 What ‘usual’ accoutrements did Huntington expect and not find, we may wonder? With her impressive frontal stance, her aura of contained energy, her full breasts and wide hips — instantly evoking associations with nature’s fertility as exemplified by womanhood — her body draped in beautiful ornaments, the right arm raised, the left arm probably akimbo: what more accoutrements (in addition to a chamara) did the Didarganj yakshini require? It goes to show how pre-conceptions about the function of the chamara may cloud our Vision. Why the Jchamara7 Why does the Didarganj yakshini, and many other yakshas for that matter, carry a chamara? Oddly enough, A.K. Coomaraswamy, whose most famous work deals with yakshas, does not even try to explain the chamarafs presence in their iconography. He merely notes it, almost in passing.18 In her influential study on Indian sculpture, Stella Kramrisch stresses that the flywhisk ‘marks lyakshas] as attendants...’ in ‘whatever form of cult.’19 S.P.