R: Vedic sculpture in Naples?

[Klaus Karttunen]

Katharina Kupfer wrote:
>
> The collection of the Museum in Naples contain at least 1 figurine of
> the godess Lakshmi, what has been found 1935 in Pompej (Insula I, Casa
> della Statuetta <singular!> Indiana, #149425). Maybe they have one or
> two more?
>
The so-called LakSmI (rather a yakSI) is a well known piece often
discussed by art historians since it was found in the 1930s in the
excavations of the above-mentioned house in Pompei by A. Maiuri. In the
1970s the late Elisabeth During Caspers showed that it had originally
been one of the legs of an ornamental table. Myself, I pointed out in
South Asian Archaeology 1995 that such tables were actually mentioned in
several Greek and Latin sources. There are two similar pieces found in Maharashtra.

However, this statuette, though part of the Museum collections in
Naples, does not belong to that particular collection, which is a
special collection of erotic art (Graeco-Roman), formerly not shown to
public. I have never heard that there should be anything Indian in it.

Regards
Klaus

--
Klaus Karttunen, Ph.D.
Docent of Indology and Classical Ethnography
Institute of Asian and African Studies
PL 59 (Unioninkatu 38 B), 00014 University of Helsinki, FINLAND
phone 358-0-19122188, fax 358-0-19122094