SOUTH INDIA, PALLAVA PERIOD, 8TH CENTURY

The Pallava rulers fashioned themselves as great patrons of arts and literature. Keenly aware of the close connection between religious diversity and economic prosperity, they cultivated a cosmopolitan and heterogeneous sacred and urban landscape within their domain. The Pallava stone temple constructions at Mamallapuram and Kanchipuram are well known, but the earliest metal images belonging to the Hindu tradition to be cast in South India were also produced during in the Pallava era (7th - 9th centuries). These striking bronze figures represent the god Vishnu and they display distinct features evident in the present example, making this figure of Vishnu a superb example of the period. As seen here, the Pallava embodiment of Vishnu is characterized by a lithe attenuated torso and elongated limbs crowned by a tall jatamukuta, a triple- or quadruple-strand upavita of pearls and a second simpler sacred thread that falls beneath the dhoti to reappear beside the figure's left ankle, the long garment wrapped in the manner of a skirt heavily draped around the hips and secured with a girdle embellished with tassels, loops, and ribbons carefully articulated fanning out to the sides, the face flanked by makara earrings and plaits of hair laid across the shoulders and upper back, and his chakra turned edgewise rather than flat to the viewer as it would become in the Chola era. For a closely related example from a slightly later period and a discussion of stylistic changes in the Pallava-Chola transition, see V. Dehejia, The Sensuous and the Sacred, 2002, p. 174-5, cat. no. 37; for further discussion of Pallava bronzes, see R. Nagaswamy, "South Indian Bronzes", in K. Khandalavala ed., The Great Tradition: Indian Bronze Masterpieces, 1988, pp. 149-157.