Even though his legs are broken off below the knees, this Yaksha—a male Hindu nature spirit—still stands more than 3 feet tall and smiles benignly. Found in the ruins of a Buddhist cave-temple at the site of Pitalkhora in western India, the stone statue holds a shallow bowl over his head and may represent the Yaksha Sankarin, mentioned in Mahamayuri, a Buddhist text. Others believe it could be a depiction of Nalakuvara, one of the two sons of Kuvera, the Hindu god of wealth. Pitalkhora is home to more than a dozen Buddhist cave-temples, dating from the third century […]
