Abstract
Hindu Metal Images. Dr. F. H. Gravely and Mr. T. N. Ramachandran of the Madras Government Museum have compiled an illustrated catalogue of the South Indian Hindu metal images in the Museum collections (Bull., N.S., General Section, vol. 1, pt. 2). The Museum has acquired a particularly fine collection of these images, especially during the last thirty years, mostly from treasure trove. All are religious in purpose and are intended to remind worshippers of the divine. Each must conform to a pattern, laid down by tradition and prescribed in the craftman?s handbook, which is regarded as a canon of divine origin. Hindu sculptors form a special caste. In these metal figures the emblems of the deities, especially the bow, arrow, mace, spear, and flowers that are prescribed to be held in the hands are often inserted separately, the images being cast with the hands in the holding position. Most images have rnore than one pair of arms. Of the three principal deities, Brahma has four faces and two pairs of hands, of which the upper right holds a rosary and the left a vessel with a spout. Vishnu carries a discus in the right, and a conch in the left of, usually, the upper pair of hands. Siva the destroyer is generally worshipped as a phallus in the central shrine of his temples; but images of him are also worshipped and are taken round in procession at festivals. His usual emblems in southern India are the axe and the antelope, but in the north the trident is more often seen. Other emblems of this deity are the drum, the skull-cap and various weapons of war. He has two aspects, the benign and the terrible. Siva is sometimes shown combined with Vishnu and sometimes with his consort Parvati, as right half male and left half female. By some it is believed that Vishnu cannot function without his sakti, the female principle.
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Research Items. Nature 131, 279–281 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/131279a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/131279a0