Footnote 2 The Mandu story and the historical wrongs it seeks to right are structurally identical with the more notorious efforts in Ayodhya, Mathura and Banaras: in each of these places, there is an intensified sacred geography, standing as symbol of a sectarian identity posing as national. According to this account of the story, the statue in the British Museum is not of the amphibious deity Ambika but of the Hindu goddess Sarasvatī, and that it was originally situated within the Bhojaśālā complex which was (predictably) later destroyed and built over by Muslim invaders. Bhoja Raja, and his legendary royal complex, Bhojaśālā, form a regional version of that story of the Hindu nation. There are other claims regarding the sectarian identity and historical provenance of this statue claims which are of a piece with efforts to recreate a glorious Hindu past for India, anchored on to specific personalities and places. King Bhoja is a legendary king of the Rajput Parmar dynasty, who ruled from his capital in Mandu in the first half of the eleventh century the date on the stela is 1091 Saṃvat, which corresponds to 1034 CE. The base of the statue bears a Sanskrit inscription which declares that the statue was commissioned and dedicated by a Vararūcī, who was intent on the Candranagarī and Vidyādharī branches of Jaina religion of Bhoja the king, and who had also dedicated a statue of Vagdevī and a triad of Jīnas (Jaina adepts). The museum’s webpages note that this is a statue of Ambika, a deity shared by Hindus and Jains. In the British Museum, there is a lovely statue of a female deity which is said to be from Dhar, the centre of our protagonists’ zone of action, but from many centuries before they appeared.

Luring warrior social empires