INDIA, MATHURA, KUSHAN PERIOD, CIRCA 3RD CENTURY

This is a rare early depiction of Vishnu in his boar incarnation rescuing Earth, which is of perennial interest in later sculpture and of complex symbolic content within Vedic cosmology; for another fragment of similar date, from the Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, see S. Czuma, Kushan Sculpture: Images from Early India, 1985, p. 132, cat. no. 58