Indian Temples & Iconography

Kiratarjuniya Panel, Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu, India: Beauty of this sculptural panel is that it is the depiction of the poetry of Bharavi, ...

Cave shrines at Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu: Deviating from Shiva, Vishnu is depicted in a limited set of forms across Mahabalipuram. Well to ...

He sits there silent, stone cold, like nothing ever bothers him. He is passive silent distant and truely unapproachable. His potency spreads...

Shiva, is self taught, raw, unadutrated truth, too hard to digest, too hard to comprehend, too hard to accept in our pathetic lives. he is t...

I have had a lot of people coming up with interesting comments on the Vimana. Here are a few view points! These are not discoveries made by ...

The Dharmaraja ratha being the largest of the rathas, has been dedicated to shiva. It has a stone ladder which reaches up to the first floor...

Gigantic with respect to all the other rathas found here, the dharmaraja ratha is a chariot of the Lord Shiva. A larger version of the Arjun...

Indra is a deity very closely associated with Buddhism, the edicts of Ashoka were carved on pillars which took their idea from his staff. Th...

Surprizing as it may sound, and very rightly deduced by J C Harle, there is a very high likelyhood that this ratha was attributed to none ot...

The mystery of the draupadi ratha has indeed made me post again. Dwelling into the tantric cult of west bengal, here is something of intere...

This is a deviation from my marathon on the Rathas, but i am just floored to see the amazing similarity between the jatamukuta( head gear of...

Arjuna ratha: Dedicated to Lord Shiva, this ratha speaks a lot about Shiva iconography and dravida style of architecture. It seems to be gov...

This very clearly represents a hut from a rural area, largely from bengal. Its part of a museum of architecture which also emphasizes in all...

The Rathas: Interesting evidence shows that the rathas were indeed earlier in chronology as compare to the Kailasanatha temple at Ellora. ...

This is truely one of the most spectacular sculptures found here, a little north of Chennai. It is known to date back to the 1st century BC,...

Shiva's dance involves all of 108 poses, some of which have been sculpted in bronze as well as stone on temple walls. Here at the Brihad...

Before we jump to the temples of the Cholas we need to understand what brought about their forms and the prototypes for the same. Their pred...

The Cholas were Shaivite follower though they were tolerant towards other sects. Their Kuladeivam was Lord Shiva in whose honour they are kn...

The Cholas ruled in South India from the 9th century to the 13th century. Along with the Pandyas they defeated the Pallavas, who finally dis...

they called this the dancing skanda. i still think this is shiva himself ( the jattas probably give him away). but having come upon skanda, ...