Indian Tantric Water Spout

Shape first. Explanation, if any, later.

This tantric water spout comes from Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, and dates to the 18th or 19th century. It is Jaisalmer stone. Stone spouts were set into Indian temple and palace walls to carry water, and tantric imagery, which reduces the divine to abstract forms, gave worshippers something to meditate on. A stepped, pointed outline rises to a small crest. Inside a recessed field sits a square panel with a border of scalloped loops, surrounding a central form from which ridged lines radiate. Warm yellow stone shows at the edges, greyer within. Thirty and a half inches high and twenty wide.

A good deal of quiet, for a piece of stone.