Studies in Indian Art c12.s13.37

c12.s13.37

Another important image of Viṣṇu (2525) resembles the above in its artistic decoration but shows the god with a Nṛsiṃha face on the right and a Varāha face on the left. Coomaraswamy published the bust of a Nṛsiṃha-Varāha Viṣṇu from Mathura (now in the Boston Museum), which is almost like our figure. He says "The figure exhibits the broad shoulders and slender "lion" waist of the Indian ideal type, with the firmness and fullness of flesh and massive modelling characteristic of the Gupta period; it is an important document equally of art and iconography"³. This Viśvarūpi Viṣṇu presents a combination of Varāha and Nṛsiṃha *avatāras*. The Museum also has a terracotta panel (2419) showing a similar four armed Viṣṇu, two of whose arms now broken must have held the symbols *padma* and *śaṅkha* in their natural form, and two others were placed on the heads of dwarfish *chakra* (male) and *gadā* (female) *āyudha puruṣas* squatting in *utkuṭikāsana*. Kālidāsa, Raghu. 10, 60, mentions the dwarfish statues of the Vaiṣṇava *āyudha puruṣas* in the Gupta period. The representation of the symbols both in their natural and personified forms and also the placing of the right leg a little in front of the left, suggest affinities of this image with the Para-Vāsudeva form mentioned in Hindu Iconography⁴