This red sandstone carving shows a knee-length composite figure in high relief. It is a phallic symbol of Shiva in the Ardhanarishvara Murti. This is the name of the androgynous form in which Shiva is depicted as 'the Lord who is Half-woman'.

Here the sculpture is divided vertically. The right half is male and has the third eye and an erect penis. The left half is female with a prominent breast, waist-girdle and hair plaits. The male arm is missing. The figure stands against a phallus, carved in low relief on the back with a demon face.

Among the earliest anthropomorphic sculptures of Siva to appear is that of Siva in his androgynous form, Ardhanarishvara, ‘the Lord who is Half-Woman’. In this manifestation, Siva reveals himself in a bi-sexual form, divided vertically, with Parvati occupying his left-half. This example, from the early Kushan period, is amongst the earliest known occurrence of this subject. In addition to these all to rare examples of Kushan period Ardhanarishvara figures, this subject also appears as one of the Siva’s faces on some of the earliest caturmukhalinga (‘four-faced linga’). These depictions, important from the beginnings of anthropomorphic representation of the Brahmanical gods, give form to concepts already expressed in the most ancient compendium of Indian religious thought, the Rgveda.

Carved in high relief, the composite figure stands in a relaxed manner, with a vertical division separating the two entities. Siva’s form is on the right, distinguished by a taut muscular and ‘masuline’ form and the aroused penis which projects upwards from his waist-cloth. Siva’s third eye is vertically divided and only half represented; similarly the hair styles differ, set apart by this vertical divide. Parvati’s half is more rounded and ‘feminine’ in its form, and displays a single breast, long tresses of hair and a decorated girdle, clearly distinguished from Siva’s simple waist cord. Parvati’s hand appears to hold a flower; the missing arm of Siva presumably was gesturing protection (abhayamudra), as seen on other surviving examples of this subject.

The figure stands against a phallic-like linga, Siva’s emblem. On the reverse the anatomical markings make the phallic-associations explicit. A demonic face is also carved in bas-relief, perhaps a depiction of Rudra the ‘howler’, the wild Vedic god from whom Siva (‘’the auspicious”) claims his ancestry.