The Development of Hindu Iconography c19.s6.7.4

c19.s6.7.4

A fragmentary relief from Eastern India (only the head and upper part of the torso with multiple arms, some intact, others broken, are preserved), probably from Orissa, now in the collection of the Asutosh Museum, shows also in an interesting manner the combined representation of Sūrya and Lokeśvara. The composite god appears to have been ten-armed, six of whose hands are gone; of the remaining four hands, two right hold a noose (?) and a full-blossomed lotus flower by its stalk, the two left holding a similar full-blown lotus by its stalk and another indistinct object. The tiny figure of the Dhyāni-Buddha Amitābha seated on the top of the raised coils of jaṭāmukuṭa indicates the Lokeśvara character of the god, while the full-blown lotuses held by his two parallel hands on either side in a manner in which they are shown in the hands of a North-Indian Sun-icon emphasise his solar nature; the lower portion of the god being gone, we cannot be sure whether there were boots in his legs or seven horses being driven by Aruṇa carved on the pedestal, and such other characteristics of a north-Indian Sūrya figure. The sculpture with its pointed torus-prabhāvalī can be dated in the late eleventh century or early twelfth century A.D. (Pl. XLVIII, Fig. 3).