The Lady with the Mirror: A Study of the Wrong Provenance and Significance of the Darpana Dharini in Indian Art

Indic art is vastly different in terms of aesthetics as well as in the way it projects reality, when compared to the Western canon of art. The Indian view of aesthetic often combines the material aspects with the spiritual aspects of life (Coomaraswamy, 2015). Consequently, secular sculptures, which range from a procession to erotic imagery, are often found in the relief carvings of stupas and temples. While studying the relief sculptures archaeologically, it is evident that the Indian artists, throughout the ages, exploited what can be termed as the "common pool of motifs." These motifs, that first appeared in Buddhism, were, then, later applied to the Jain and the Hindu art and subsequently acquired their own religious and social connotations (Harle, 1994). One such motif is that of the Darpana dharini figurine, or the woman holding a mirror. Although more common to the temples of South India, the figurine is not absent from the three major Indic religions of Ancient India and can be traced back to the Gandhara School of Art. The purpose of this paper is to study the lady with the mirror, to attempt to trace its prototype and highlight the myths associated with it not just in the Indic context but also in the parallel cultures, from where the figure might possibly have penetrated into Indian art. For the purpose of this, the study employs an extensive comparison with the Hellenistic parallels of the figure, housed in some of the major museums of the world and presents a quantitative database listing some of the significant samples that were studied closely. It, then, attempts to address the debate of identification and significance of this figure, which seems compounded by the multiple labels the figure seems to acquire in different museums, where it has been housed and tries to evaluate whether the figure is a yakshi, an apsara or a surasundari.