This remarkable sculpture is made of special bronze from Swamimalai, a town in an Indian State of Tamil Nadu. The ancient technique by which it is made is called as Madhuchista Vidhana (Lost-wax process), which is the specialty of the heritage of South Indian sculptors. Sri Vallabha Ganapati, also known as Maha Vallabha Ganapati is one among the 32 forms of Lord Ganesha. The leader of the Ganas of

An eight-legged creature of mythical repute, Sharabha is known to have cleared great valleys in a single jump. Stronger than an elephant and more powerful than a lion, He is an avatara (earthly incarnation of the divine) of the great Lord Veerabhadra. His form is a composite of man and beast and bird, as could be seen in this one-of-a-kind bronze made in South India. Lord Shrabha has a fierce, lio

Lord Hanuman is revered as a fine warrior and a great bhakta (devotee). As part of the vanara-sena that fought Lanka on Rama’s side, His valour and His love of Rama (and everything dear to Rama) are much talked about to this day. The fact that Hanuman is a superior yogi, possessed of the ashtasiddhis and the navanidhis, is oft overlooked. The murti that you see on this page is a solid-cast work

Harihara is a lesser-known deity from the Hindu pantheon. He emerges from the amalgamation of Vishnu and Shiva, the preserver and destroyer of the trinity right after Brahma the creator. The sublime serenity of Vishnu meets the fierce stance of Shiva in this composite deity. A number of defining contrasts characterise this composition. Shiva's jaatmukuta to Vishnu's golden crown; Shiva&#

The towering presence of Lord Vishnu would add a world of auspiciousness to your space. A larger-than-life murti like the one that you see on this page serves just the purpose. It is fashioned from pure bronze in the hands of traditional artisans of the South. Indeed, bronze as a medium of the great Indian cultural tradition flourished in the Southern recesses of the subcontinent, under the patron

The Kalinga Nardhana Krishna is the quintessential image of the triumph of dharma over adharma. When the wicked serpent, Kalinga or Kaliya, had made a home for itself in the Yamuna and none of the inhabitants of Braj could access its beauty and nourishment due to his presence, it was the great Lord Krishna who acted as savior. In a brutal battle between the divine and the serpentine, the conqueror

As the bronze in the mould cools down and the wax surrounding it is melted away in the traditional style of the lost wax art form, what remains is an elaborate statuette of Lord Shiva in his dancing form as Nataraja. Body twisted in a graceful pose that came straight out of the pages of the Natyashastra, Nataraja dances away divinely, feet trampling a demon. From the two aspects of Natraja’s per

Polished with a golden sheen and cast in bronze, the majestic Hanuman kneels in the form of Panchamukhi (five-headed) on this sculpture. All his five heads stare off in five different directions, eternalised at the moment he defeats Ahiravana in the warm depths of the underworld. During the battle between Lord Rama and the demon king Ravana, the latter went to the ruler of the netherworld seeking

According to the Siddhartha-Samhita, there are twenty-four avatars of Lord Vishnu. The Trimurti is a concept in Hinduism in which the cosmic functions of creation, maintenance, and destruction are personified by Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Shiva the destroyer or transformer. His four arms indicate his all-powerful and all-pervasive nature. The conch (Panchajanya) symbolizes that

Brahma, narrating the story about Sati’s marriage to Shiva in the Shiva Purana, notes that “On hearing these words of Lord Shiva adept in the divine sports I touched my head and in the same manner bowed to Shiva. When I thus touched my head I assumed the shape of his vehicle, the bull.” This instance of Brahma transforming into Nandi relates to one of the eighteen forms of Shiva mentioned in

Lord Varaha, the third of Vishnu’s dashavataras, is the most instantly recognizable of the incarnations. The word ‘Varaha’ is Sanskrit for boar; and while some iconographies feature Varaha as a pig-shaped deity, the painting that you see on this page is of an anthropomorphic boar-headed human-bodied entity. Lord Varaha is possessed of eight arms (ashtabhujadhari) and clad in a flame-colored

Sri Maha Shodashi is a Hindu goddess and is an aspect of Mahadevi mainly worshipped in Shaktism, a goddess-oriented sect of Hinduism. She is also revered as one of the prominent Mahavidyas. She is glorified in many Shakta texts, with Lalita Sahasranama being the most popular one. Sri Maha Shodashi is also known as Tripura Sundari, Rajarajeshwari, and Lalita. She is a personification of Supreme Ene

Lord Kamadeva is Hindu dharma’s presiding deity over desire. Devi Rati is the object of the desire He embodies. In the murti that you see on this page, the two are captured in the midst of the passionate dance. Their arms and legs are in the air. The spinal column, all the way from the hips to the neck, is contorted at an expressive angle. Fashioned from panchaloha, a blend of five (‘loha’)

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An ancient South Indian legend tells of Deva Guru Brihaspati and Lord of Winds Vayu, descending to Earth to build a Bhuloka Vaikuntam, in the Thrissur district of Kerala. It was to be a holy abode for Vishnu in the mortal realm. That town was named Guruvayur after its two celestial architects and the temple came to be called the Guruvayur Temple. Guruvayurappan is the Lord of Guruvayur or the Unni

In a touch of artistic poetry – the god of auspicious starts – is artistically shown reclining in rest in this ‘panchaloha’ bronze statue executed in the ‘madhuchista vidhana’ lost wax technique. Ganesha’s image is presented to us in his two-armed avatar, lying on his side, and supported by a long bolster under his hand and head. His left hand is placed over his left leg. Ganesha’s

The art historian Partha Mitter, when writing his oft-cited masterpiece ‘Many Maligned Monsters,’ explained that European and Victorian sensibilities wrongly assumed the significance of Indian art – when they came across depictions of four or eight-armed gods and goddesses, often in striking and fierce moments vanquishing demons, Westerners thought that we had an underdeveloped sense of real

The work of art you see on this page is a powerful confluence. It is a fusion of the innocence and wisdom of Lord Ganesha with the strength and prowess of Lord Hanuman. The former has the gigantic head of the gentle elephant, the latter the protruding jaw of the clever monkey. A fine blend of the two makes for composition so unusual, that it would be a one-of-a-kind addition to any private space o

The majestic Lord Ganesha is seated on an upturned-lotus throne. This chaturbhujadhari (the one possessed of four arms) figure seated in lalitasana is a widely loved and worshipped roopa (form) of the deity. What makes this a unique work of art is the medium in which it is fashioned and the finesse with which it has been executed. It is a panchaloha sculpture handpicked from the finest studios of