This sculpture was one of hundreds that originally adorned the exterior of a great Hindu temple in Central India or Rajasthan. The temple’s exterior consisted of three horizontal zones: a solid base with steep flight of steps leading to the temple entrance; a middle zone comprised of walls and balconied openings with a complex series of niches for the display of hundreds of sculpted figures; and finally, the grouping of roofs, reminiscent of mountain peaks, that culminate in the tall shikhara above the shrine.

Within the sculptural program on the temple’s exterior figures of women flanked the images of male deities, far outnumbering those of the gods. Associated with abundance and fertility, the women are depicted as sensuous beings, with full, rounded breasts, tiny waists, ample hips, and wearing opulent jewelry. The sway of their poses, sometimes rather exaggerated and twisting, reflect yoga practices and the movements of classical Indian dance. This woman is either a celestial maiden (Surasundari) or one of the Alasa-kanyas, the indolent maidens whose grace and beauty make a heavenly palace of the temple.

Sculptors of temple images followed formulas codified in texts that outlined the specifications for proper temple architecture. Texts such as the Shilpa Prakasha [Light on Art] describes sixteen types of women figures that should adorn the walls of a temple and emphatically states the necessity of such figures: “As a house without a wife, as frolic without a woman/ So, without the figure of woman the monument will be of inferior quality and will bear no fruit.”