This is a fragment of a full-length sculpture portraying the ferocious
Hindu goddess Kali in the form of Chamunda, an epithet derived from her
act of decapitating the demons Chanda and Munda. Chamunda embodies
bareness and decay. Her hair is piled up into a chignon decorated with a
tiara of skulls and a crescent moon. She scowls, baring her teeth, and
enormous eyeballs protrude menacingly from sunken sockets in her
skeletal face. As a necklace, she wears a snake whose coils echo the
rings of decaying flesh that sag beneath her collarbone. Just above her
navel on her emaciated torso is a scorpion, a symbol of sickness and
death. She presumably once held lethal objects in the hands of her
twelve missing arms.
