In Indian art, a surasundari (literally "celestial beauty") is a young maiden characterizing feminine beauty and graceful sensuality.

Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

and

Jain Jainism ( ), also known as Jain Dharma, is an Indian religion. Jainism traces its spiritual ideas and history through the succession of twenty-four tirthankaras (supreme preachers of ''Dharma''), with the first in the current time cycle being ...

shrines have featured sensual figures in form of

yakshi ''Yakshinis'' or ''yakshis'' (यक्षिणी sa, yakṣiṇī or ''yakṣī''; pi, yakkhiṇī or ''yakkhī'') are a class of female nature spirits in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain religious mythologies that are different from devas and ...

s and other spirits since 2nd century BCE. However, the surasundari motif gained prominence in Indian temple architecture only around the beginning of the 9th century CE. ''Shilpa-Prakasha'', a 9th-century Tantric architectural treatise, declares a monument without a surasundari as inferior and fruitless. The 15th century text ''Kshirarnava'' states that the surasundaris should be depicted looking down (''adho-drishti''), not looking at someone. In temple sculptures, the surasundaris are often depicted as attendants of gods and goddesses. They also manifest as dancing apsaras. A

salabhanjika A salabhanjika or shalabhanjika is a term found in Indian art and literature with a variety of meanings. In Buddhist art, it means an image of a woman or yakshi next to, often holding, a tree, or a reference to Maya near the ''sala'' tree giving ...

or tree nymph is another variation of a surasundari. Other forms of a surasundari include: The presence of surasundaris in religious shrines is interpreted in several ways. A spiritual interpretation is that they represent

shakti In Hinduism, especially Shaktism (a theological tradition of Hinduism), Shakti (Devanagari: शक्ति, IAST: Śakti; lit. "Energy, ability, strength, effort, power, capability") is the primordial cosmic energy, female in aspect, and r ...

(the feminine cosmic energy), and can be considered as both auspicious and empowering. A secular interpretation is that they represent the prosperity of the king who commissioned the temple.

References

{{reflist Hindu temple architecture Indian sculpture