South Indian Bronzes: A Historical Survey of South Indian Sculpture with Iconographical Notes Based on Original Sources c7.29

c7.29

These memorial portraits were possibly a development of the earlier practice of attaching an effigy of the donor at the foot of an image set up by the pious devotees, a practice which has also survived in many of the South Indian images, *e.g.*, in the image of Subramanya (plate LIV). The gifts to the temples, though generally made from devotional motives sometimes owed their origins to a desire to win divine favours or assistance in worldly accomplishments by the donor. As we learn, for instance, from an inscription of Vallabhadeva, a military officer of Deva Raya, II, of Vijayanagara (1446-47) on the east wall of the central shrine of the Raj Rajeswara temple at Tanjore, that he presented to the God at Tanjore certain gold and silver ornaments "with the desire to accomplish the conquest of the world (*dig-vijaya*)."