To apply the term ‘Kushan art’ is to reductively clump together the many diverse artistic traditions embraced by the Kushan Empire. The Kushans themselves originated in Chinese Turkestan or China itself, They were one of the five aristocratic tribes of the Yue-zhi People, nomadic pastoralists who lived on the grassland steppes of what is now north-western China. They migrated south, travelling thousands of miles, until in 135 BC, they encountered the Graeco-Bactrian Kingdom, in modern Afghanistan and Pakistan. They displaced these Greeks, forcing them south to the Hindu Kush, and established their own territorial empire based on the Greek cities. Under the Kushans were regions as diverse as Gandhara – the famous Graeco-Buddhist culture, which produced some of the most spectacular art in South Asia – the Hindu regions of north India, the nomadic Uzbeks, and Iranian peoples. The Kushans responded not by suppressing these cultures, and trying to impose a ‘Kushan’ identity, but rather by embracing them. From their Graeco-Bactrian subjects, they adopted the Greek alphabet (with the addition of the letter sh, which did not exist in Greek), and Greek-style coinage, which presented the Kushan monarch as a Hellenistic god-king. From their other subjects, they adopted diverse artistic traditions and a wealth of religions, including Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and Hindu Shaivism, as well as a number of Greek gods.

It is in this context of religious syncretism that this extraordinary figure of a seated woman should be considered. She comes from a long tradition of fertility goddesses in ancient Indian art, which indeed were one of the earliest subjects for Indian artists, long before Hinduism or Buddhism took hold. While these practices were considered immature and backwards by many Hindus and Buddhists, they remained popular with the laity, and continued to be a source of inspiration and comfort in the dangerous process of childbirth. Richly decorated, this figure falls in what might be classed as the ‘northern’ tradition of Kushan ceramics, centred around Afghanistan, and characterised by palette of bright reds, yellows, and deep blacks. The figure is resplendent in a remarkable outfit which calls to mind the garb of the Mediaeval jester. Her torso is covered with a jerkin or tabard in black, with floriate roundels over her small breasts. The jerkin is outlined with yellow circles, which are repeated around the neckline. The same floriate roundels are found on her knees. Her face is brightly painted, her almond-shaped eyes highlighted in yellow, and her small pointed tongue protruding from her mouth. On either side of her face hang two long strands of black hair, which hide her ears. On her head, she wears a flat hat, with a protruding rim, held in place with a diadem of striped yellow and black. She sits in a stiff upright position, legs together, and arms held tightly by her side.

The exact purpose of this figure is unclear, and the situation is confounded rather than clarified by a number of unusual features. First, this figure is hollow, as evidenced by the large rimmed hole in the centre of her back, and the small holes at the base of her feet. Additionally, there is evidence that there was once a handle on the back. A large, broken, protrusion from the small of her back would seem to meet a similar protrusion at the nape of her neck. We seem, then, to have a vessel of some kind. The presence of the holes in the feet may indicate that this was some kind of rhyton, a drinking vessel in which liquid was poured into one end, and was funnelled through a small hole into the recipient’s mouth. Invented in Achaemenid Persia, and perfected by the Greeks, rhyta were often elaborately decorated and came in a variety of imaginative human and animal forms. They were an essential component of the Greek symposion, the elite drinking parties at which various games were played, including using rhyta, and at which the exotic and the extravagant could be safely explored within a ritualised context which protected the fabric of the democratic Greek poleis (city-states). The Kushans avidly interacted with their Greek subjects, who had arrived with Alexander’s conquest of parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan in 332 BC, and who had maintained various semi-independent Indo-Greek kingdoms in the centuries thereafter. If this is indeed a rhyton, this would be a prime example of how Greek and Kushan forms merged across the expansive Kushan Empire. Indeed, rhyta of various forms in bone, metal and ceramic are known from the Kushan Period.