The Development of Hindu Iconography c19.s5.1.3

c19.s5.1.3

particular weapons or attributes are also sometimes placed in their hands. The mere presence of such emblems in the hands of the attendants of Vāsudeva Viṣṇu, however, would not always mean that they are Āyudhapuruṣas. Thus, in the Madhyama Bhogāsanamūrti of Viṣṇu in the Kailāsanāthasvāmin temple at Conjeevaram (Rao, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 105, Pl. XXVI), the god does not hold any of the attributes in his four hands; but a conch-shell and a discus are carried by two small attendants who also hold a yak-tail in their other hands. These two figures have been wrongly described by Rao as Āyudhapuruṣas; but as they are female figures, and as Cakra- and Śaṅkha-puruṣas are never shown thus, they are really the female companions of the god carrying for him two of his principal attributes. The Viṣṇu-cakra, found at Sharishadaha (Twenty-four Perganas, Bengal) and now in the collection of the Asutosh Museum, Calcutta University, is a unique sculpture carved on both sides with the same device. It depicts a four-armed figure dancing on the shoulders of Garuḍa in the centre of a finely carved wheel; his front hands are beating time over his head (or shown in one form of obeisance, namaskāra), the back hands holding a cakra and a gadā. Garuḍa and these two emblems prove that the figure inside the wheel is no other than the Cakrapuruṣa.