A poor man has very little to eat so is thin and frail. A worker labours hard for a living so is sinewy and muscular. A rich man is plump and well-endowed because he neither sweats in the field nor ever goes hungry.
So observed the early forefathers within their thriving, bustling grass-root societies and concluded if there ever was a lord of wealth, a nice little pot belly would have to be an important part of his description – and thus after a passage of time had come about Kubera, the king of the Yakshas and guardian of treasures.
Not to mention, a lord of wealth who since the time of his creation has evolved and changed both in form and story, as one generation gave way to the next, yet never lost his trademark lumpish, roundish shape.
The sculptors of Mathura during the Kushan period.
The master sculptors of Mathura did not invent Kubera or his legends. By the time Kubera had reached their studios, he was already a deity in his own right and well entrenched in mythology, having even found a place in the great epics of Ramayana and Mahabarata.
What the sculptors merely did was add in little details to his divinely obese stature like a lock of hair, a moustache and a robe that revealed their times, fashion and taste.
Importantly, they chipped away his earlier image of a dwarfed sized deformed hideous old man with three legs and eight teeth, as mentioned in the old Puranas, and brought in a uniformity, later to be reproduced with slight alterations by different cultures and religions that adopted him.
Furthermore, much like what the sculptors of Gandhara achieved by producing the Buddha in human form for the first time, see Farbound.Net snippet, the Greek Buddha, the sculptors of Mathura accomplished with their sculptures of Kubera, and in the process left behind all too visible signs of their highly refined skills with the chisel.
One fine example of the work they produced in the 2nd century, is a sculpture of Kubera that was excavated from the ruins of Ahichchhatra, which was once the capital city of the Northern Panchala Kingdom of antiquity, but during the time of the sculpture’s creation was a part of the Kushan empire.
How the sculpture depicts Kubera.
Possibly modelled after a Kushan nobleman, or some rich merchant, and perhaps one of the earliest to be produced, it is sculpted entirely out of red sandstone, quarried from somewhere near Ahichchhatra itself, and endows Kubera with a pleasant and lumpish appearance. More human and more pleasing to perceive than his earlier description in the Puranas.
The sculpture depicts Kubera with a head full of curly ringlets; long wavy hair cascading down to the shoulders; a large round face with thick eyebrows awning gently over eyelids half shut; a well pronounced lower lip; a bow shaped well groomed mustache; and more importantly, with his trademark large round fat belly with a drape style lower garment hugging its bottom edge – in the same manner a man with a large belly would have actually worn it.
This subtle blend of realism in art was a defining characteristic of both the Gandhara and Mathura school of art, with the latter being an indigenous sculpting style that had emerged and flourished in the region of present day Uttar Pradesh, during the Kushan period.
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Emergence of the Gandhara and Mathura School of Art, during the Kushan period.
The Kushans, who were originally a nomadic clan of horse archers known in antiquity as the Yuehzi, had ruled vast stretches of the Indian subcontinent between the 1st and 5th century Ce.
They had reigned from their twin capital cities of Taxila and Mathura, and being great patrons of the arts had encouraged sculptors and sculpting which had led to the establishment of two separate schools. One at Gandhara (present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan) and the other at Mathura (present-day state of Uttar Pradesh, India).
Both regions were instrumental in introducing innovations in the field simultaneously, but had done so in their own distinctive way. While the art of Gandhara reflected Greek influences, Mathura was more local in form and outlasted its contemporary.
In present-day India, Kubera is still worshipped in spite of the huge popularity of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth. Though he still remains a lesser god, as during the time of the Puranas.
I F I This is an Independent story on a Kubera sculpture that was excavated from Ahichchhatra in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, India, and offers a glimpse of how Kubera may have acquired his trademark pot belly, and how the sculptors at Mathura, during the Kushan period, had remodelled his appearance. It has been created out of facts curated from literary and historical sources. The sculpture featured in this story is on exhibit at the National Museum in Delhi.I
