Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c13.s7.13

c13.s7.13

(6) With the institution of regular shrines in the Bhāgavata cult it goes without saying that actual images representing divinities like Vāsudeva, Saṅkarṣaṇa etc. were set up in the form of stone images. We have actually discovered in the excavations at the Morā shrine stone torsos representing the Vṛiṣhṇi Heroes (Vṛiṣhṇināṁ pañchavīrāṇām archāḥ), whose names as we know from the Vāyu Purāṇa were Balarāma, Kṛiṣhṇa, Pradyumna, Aniruddha and Sāmba. Their style closely follows that of the free-standing Yakṣhas in that they are carved in the round. They are dressed in a dhotī and uttarīya and some types of ornaments as found on the Yakṣha figures, their right-hand is held in abhayamudrā and the muscles of the breast and body generally are emphasised like those in the Yakṣha statues. The only noticeable distinction is in the size of these two groups of images. Whereas the Yakṣha statues are of a grandiose style of colossal size, the Vaiṣhṇava images are comparatively smaller, approximating nearly the life-size figures. It appears that this diminution of the size of images was a developing tendency and the same may be said with regard to the Bodhisattva images. These statues from Morā furnish undisputed proof of the priority of Vaiṣhṇava images over the images of the Buddha and the Bodhisattva. [Figs. 166-7].