Since his genesis around the year 900 in sculpture and in hymns, Śiva as Naṭarāja has been associated with Cidambaram (in Tamil, Tillai), residing in the innermost enclosure of the temple complex in the Hall of Consciousness, the cit-sabha. By the seventh century, saints Appār, Sambandār, Sundarar, and Māṇikkavācakar had…

Bilvamaṅgaḷa, the poet-saint and itinerant singer from the south whose songs in praise of the child Kṛṣṇa were compiled in two manuscripts: the Kṛṣṇakarṇāmritam and the Bālagōpālastuti. Bilvamaṅgaḷa lived between c. 1220 and 1300 in the Travancore region of Kerala and travelled across the country to various shrines, singing his…

Śakunāvali, A Garland of Omens, comes from the word Śakuna (शकुन) meaning omen. Śakunas are considered to be harbingers of either good or evil, auspiciousness or inauspiciousness. Andrew Topsfield in Court Painting at Udaipur writes that this Śakunāvali series was a unique commission in Udaipur. It consisted of almost a…

In the tenth skanda of the Bhāgavata purāṇa, after Kṛṣṇa defeated Kaṃsa and embarked on princely adventures with his brother Balarāma, Kṛṣṇa along with all the Yādavas gathered by the water bodies at the sacred pilgrimage site of Syamantapañcaka in Kurukṣetra (in modern-day Haryana) to bathe on the occasion and…

The Jagamohan or Audience Hall of the Temple to Sūrya at Konark has come to be more specifically known as the “Black Pagoda.” This has probably come about through some association of the epithet kāla, meaning “black,” which the Hindoos apply to all deserted or desecrated religious edifices. The term…

Valiant Rāma took hold of a blazing arrow, which looked like a hissing serpent. It was made for Indra by Brahma, bestowed in the past on the ruler of the Gods, who was desirous of conquering the three worlds; and then in turn was given to Rāma by the glorious…

German scholar Klaus Ebeling studied Rāgamāla paintings extensively and wrote the text of the same name. He regards them as visual interpretations of musical “modes” or rāgas, previously envisioned in divine or human form by musicians and poets. They show most frequently romantic or devotional situations in a somewhat stereotyped…

Śrīla Madhvācārya says: vārāhe vāma-pādaṁ tu tad-anyeṣu tu dakṣiṇam pādaṁ kalpeṣu bhagavān ujjahāra trivikramaḥ “Standing on His right foot and extending His left to the edge of the universe, Lord Vāmana became known as Trivikrama, the incarnation who performed three heroic deeds.” King Bali saw a brahmin boy or brahmachārin…

Inscriptions from the Kushana period (1st to 3rd century CE) point to the continuity of Kṛṣṇa worship, and one of the first iconographic representations of Kṛṣṇa is a stone bas-relief found near Mathura, dated to the early 1st century which shows Kṛṣṇa being carried across the river Yamuna after his…