The Stolen 'Yogini' Who Found Her Way Home

shruti chawan
Oct 16
1 min read

The ‘Yogini’ cult worship is found across India; they are worshipped in groups wherein every yogini has an individual identity. The shift in political powers somewhere receded the worship of this cult yet it continues in some or the other form even today. This statue of a Yogini belonged to a set of stone sculptures from the 10th-century Yogini temple on a hilltop at Lokhari,Banda District, Uttar Pradesh. The temple has a set of such idols, of which all have different animal heads and human body forms. This idol of Yogini is called Vrishanana Yogini, or the Goat-headed goddess. She is seated in ‘Lalit Asana’ on a plain pedestal with a plain background in a calm meditative posture. Her vahana is a swan that is seen pecking the fruit from her hand, whilst adorned with ornaments. This idol was stolen illegally somewhere around the 1980s. It is said as temples remained either unprotected or in ruins, it would be easier to smuggle artefacts from such sites. This statue, smuggled out, found its way to France, where the family of late French art collector Robert Schrimpf acquired it. Schrimpf’s widow, Martine, donated the sculpture of the goddess with an animal-shaped head to the Embassy of India in Paris in 2008. The Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Culture worked together to finally get this ‘Yogini’ back to India. Finally, the lost ‘Yogini’ found its way home in India in 2022. Today Sculpture is housed at the National Museum of Delhi since 2023.