Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c8.s1.17

c8.s1.17

*Samudra*, represents the primeval waters or sourse of creation, also called *Salilam*, *Apaḥ*. Brahman himself is a infinite ocean and his Mind also is *Samudra* (*Mano-vai Samudraḥ*). The ocean is depicted at Udaigiri in the Mahāvarāha panel. It is also part of the *Samudra-manthana* scenes later. *Nārāyaṇa*, the thousand-headed Purusha of the Ṛigveda and the Brāhmaṇas, is the same as Viṣṇu residing in the milky ocean. He represents the *Hiraṇyagarbha* principle of life or *Prāṇa* abiding in the infinite source and taking birth as the omnipresent divinity both in the universal and the individual. The concept of *Nārāyaṇa* became favourite of the Bhāgavatas and repeated almost in every Purāṇa. In art it becomes the Anantśāyī Viṣṇu as in a panel of the Deogarh temple.