Terracotta Art has attracted the mankind from the time immemorial. Be it the household or child’s play cart it dominated the human society impressively. A school of thought treated it to be the poor-man’s art but it was patronised in fact by the higher strata of society as well, While with the poor it was like the lifeline who used it for cooking and other domestic purposes besides making the toys for their children and more often than not as the deities for adoration, the most popular among them being the Mother Goddess. Such figurines have been found in abundance in the pre-historic sites of Harappa and Mohenjodaro and they continued during the historical period as well. Gradually the number of deities in Terracotta Art went on increasing and the sites like Bhumra, Ahichchhatra, Rajghat, Mathura etc. of the historical period produced a large number of deities. Interestingly the types of such deities in the earlier period was restricted to only a few deities like Siva. Mother Goddess, the sun or some composite forms but reaching the historical period their number was multiplied. Even those figures of the historical period which included the goddesses like MahisasuramardinI, Sarasvatl, Durga and others started attracting the provisions of the Silp-Sastras in making of the terracotta figurines. Though there had been a number of books on Terracotta Art in India but a work exclusively dealing with the Indian deities represented in Terracotta Art are not quite common. In the present book an effort has been made to project the deities so commonly found from the earliest times in the Indian Terracotta Art, and it is hoped that the readers will find it interesting.
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