SOUTH INDIA, TAMIL NADU, CHOLA PERIOD, 12TH-13TH CENTURY

This large rare and important Chola bronze figure represents the beloved child saint, Sambandar. Sambandar belongs to a group of 63 Shaiva-bhakti saints known as nyanmars, or leaders, said to have traveled from temple to temple in South India to sing Shiva’s praises. Along with Appar and Sundarar, Sambandar is one of the muvar, or three principle saints referred to as the Revered Three (or Revered Four when incorporating the later saint Manikkavacakar) of South India. These three poet-saints are considered responsible for writing the vast corpus of Shaiva hymns from the seventh through ninth centuries.
Much of what we believe about the historical Sambandar is dictated through Tamil poetry, including the Periya Puranam, an eleventh-century epic recounting the lives of the nyanmars. According to these sources, Sambandar was born of Brahmin parents in the seventh century at Sirkali, near Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu. As a young child, he frequently accompanied his father to the temple. One day, at the age of three, his father left him on the steps of the sacred tank as he entered to take his ritual bath. Outside the temple, Shiva’s consort Uma found the child crying from hunger and served him a bowl of milk from her own breast. When his father returned, he found Sambandar playing contentedly with a golden bowl while trickles of milk ran down his chin. In response to his father's questions about the source of the milk, Sambandar burst into song and dance praising Shiva and Uma while raising his hand and pointed toward their image, thus earning his saintly status. From that moment on, he spent his days wandering South India, singing and dancing in Shiva’s honor. Sambandar lived a brief life, perishing in his teenage years; nonetheless, he is credited with having composed thousands of hymns, many still recited today.
Owing to their significant impact on Shiva-Bhakti, images of Sambandar and other saints became common in the Pallava and Chola periods and continued in popularity to this day. These images are used in festival processions alongside principle deities, often while singing the songs the poet-saints composed themselves. Inscriptions describing the many benefactions the twelfth-century Chola general made to the Nataraja Temple in Chidambaram, nearby Sambandar’s hometown, identify an image of Sambandar as well as a gold-embellished shrine to the child saint, used for the daily recitation of Sambandar’s hymns. These records, as well as the impressive bronzes that survive from the period, imply an important independent role Sambandar maintained in temple worship.
Always depicted as a child, the style of the present figure of Sambandar is typical in the Kaveri Delta region of the Chola Empire. In this image, he holds Uma’s milk cup between two fingers of his left hand, while subtly gesturing upward toward Shiva and Uma at their abode at Mount Kailash with his right. His hair is arranged in neat rows of curls, flanked by unornamented, yet elongated earlobes. He is naked, save for an infant’s girdle charmed with bells draping his hips, a bejeweled collar necklace, and simple pairs of armlets and anklets. The curling lotus petals which form the base are in a quintessentially High Chola style. The figure maintains Sambandar’s childlike qualities, with a softly modeled body and unpretentious adornment, while commanding the presence of a spiritual authority.
The present type has been previously erroneously identified as Shiva Bhikshatana (lot 429), since both representations share aspects of nudity and the kapala-like cup. Representations of Sambandar in the present form are rare; the child saint is easily more recognizable in bronze images of him in the dancing posture, likened to images of the child Krishna dancing and trampling the serpent Kaliya. Compare the present figure to a eleventh-century figure of Sambandar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (acc.no. 2010.230). Both figures are impressive in their size, and are close comparisons in style and composition, differing only in subtle details such as Sambandar’s necklace and curls.