For the last fifteen years Dr.Sushma Ahuja has studied female images as they evolved from the ancient Indus civilization. (2600 B.C.) up to the fully developed images of 13th century temple art. A comprehensive study of female figurine will make for greater knowledge of various aspects of female power in the temples of Hadoti as well as that of Khajuraho and Ellora.
Dr. Ahuja found that female figures not only reflect divine reality but also embody mundane reality, they are sacred and erotic, seductive and powerful, beautiful and grotesque simultaneously. Their paradoxical features of being sexual and maternal concurrently make sense to woman who see themselves as ambiguous. The Hindu Goddess paradigm make the ambiguity of a so called negative feminine process and the cycle of human life sublime. The Goddesses visual depiction connect ordinary life with divine existence and rejuvenate the onlooker. The onlooker is thus able to penetrate intellectually all the three main layers mythic subject matter, iconographic form and symbolic and metaphysical meaning to emotionally experience the aesthetic.