South-Indian Images of Gods and Goddesses c8.s3.25

c8.s3.25

The exact form of Vāmana, prior to his manifestation as Trivikrama, is, according to Hēmādri, that of a fat young student of the Vēdas with crooked joints, holding a staff in his hand and wearing on his back the skin of a black buck (*kṛiṣṇājina*) (fig. 22). Representations of Vāmana figures with water-pot in one hand and an umbrella in the other² on demarcation stones of fields granted in charity, were quite common even down to the end of the nineteenth century. This auspicious figure evidently denoted fortune and was appropriately connected with boundary stones and the measurement of land. A festival in honour of Bali is still observed by the people of Mysore on the first day after the Dīpāvali-Amāvāsyā. In Malabar people connect Bali with their national harvest festival, the Ōnam, in which they worship a clay figure of this high-minded emperor. It is supposed that the king is permitted by Vishnu to visit every year the fair earth over which he once ruled and to satisfy himself that the people are quite as happy and glad as in his time.