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33.Bowl
Black Stone
Diameter: 42.5 cm
Twentieth century
Catalogue number 33.
Accession number 88.525.
Such stone implements are used primarily for religious rituals to offer food to the gods, for the annual worship of Durga in the autumn, or for wedding rituals. The bowl is filled with water and placed on the plate to obtain a reflection of the goddess during Durga puja. In wedding rituals, when a bride enters her husband's home, she places her first step into a bowl filled with milk, holding rice and a live fish in her hands, and she is embraced by his family.
The hard black stone used to fashion these implements is quarried from the hill tracts of Gaya district in Bihar among other places.
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