Vishnu reclines in peace on the multi-headed serpent Shesha, in the midst of the swirling cosmic ocean. His multiple arms rest crossed over his saffron-colored dhoti, along his sides, and bent behind his head as he sleeps between the cycles of time (yugas). His attributes, a conch shell, discus, golden mace, and lotus lie unused beside him. Brahma, the four-headed god of creation, emerges, seated on a lotus. Two horned demons, Madhu and Kaitabha, attempt to steal from Brahma the sacred scriptures of Hinduism, the Vedas, thus beginning a primordial battle of good and evil.

This work comes from the foothills of the Himalayas where rulers of small Rajput kingdoms commissioned paintings like this. This painting, in particular, comes from Guler, whose style is characterized by pale expanses, opaque hues, and smooth contour lines.

In this sandstone sculpture, Vishnu sleeps in between the dissolution and creation of the universe. Notice the empty space above Vishnu’s head. While the many hoods of the serpent Shesha are lost, his undulating body on which Vishnu reclines is intricately carved. Vishnu maintains a loose but steady grip on his conch and mace. His consort Lakshmi, flanked by an attendant, massages his feet. Signaling for Vishnu to rise from his slumber, the creator god, Brahma, emerges from Vishnu’s navel on a lotus. Thus begins the creation of the Earth and the beginning of the next yuga, or world age. Below, divine musicians play their instruments, while above, celestial figures battle.

In the central image of this folio, Krishna drives Arjuna’s chariot, a famous scene from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita. The surrounding scenes depict the ten avatars of Vishnu featured in this exhibition.

The avatars evolve from creatures of the sea to creatures of the land, beginning with Matsya, the fish, rising out of the water holding a lotus and conch (top center). In the upper left, Vishnu manifests as the tortoise, Kurma, to battle a horned creature, a mistake on the part of the artist, as it was Matsya’s duty to kill this conch-demon. The tortoise, Kurma, is generally seen aiding in the churning of the ocean to release the elixir of immortality.

Varaha, the boar, rescues the earth from the clutches of a demon whose decapitated head he holds. Narasimha, the half-man half-lion, disembowels the apostate king, Hiranyakashipu. King Bali pours water from a pot to gift his kingdom to the fifth avatar, Vamana, the dwarf, despite the protestations of his advisor, blind in his right eye. Parashurama dispatches a thousand-armed warrior king with a single axe. Hanuman, the monkey god, expresses devotion to the eighth avatar, Rama, seated with his wife Sita. Having knocked off his crown, Krishna holds his uncle, Kamsa, by the hair, as he raises his sword to kill him. Ending the violence, the ninth avatar, the Buddha, sits in meditation. Finally, at top right, the avatar still to come, Kalki, guides his winged, white horse.

The oceans swirl as demon and deity clash over control of the Vedas, the oldest scriptures of Hinduism. Vishnu, manifesting as the fish, Matsya, towers over the horse-headed demon, Hayagriva, here emerging from a conch with sword raised. Matsya strikes the demon with his mace, reclaiming the Vedas that the demon had hidden in the cosmic ocean. In order to hold the Vedas in his hands, Matsya has tucked his conch shell and lotus, attributes of Vishnu, into his belt.

Beastly demons and celestial deities — including Brahma and Shiva — tug at either end of the snake Vasuki to rotate the towering Mount Mandara, churning the cosmic ocean in a contest for the elixir of immortality. Vishnu, in the form of Kurma, the tortoise, supports Mt. Mandara from below, and in human form oversees the proceedings from atop the mountain. While descriptions of the jewels that emerge from the churning vary from source to source, this painting illustrates eight of the gems explicitly, in boxes at the top of the painting: Vishnu’s conch, the wish-fulfilling cow; two golden vessels containing poison and the elixir of immortality respectively; a seven-headed horse, a divine elephant, and the sun and moon.

Varaha, the mighty boar avatar of Vishnu, pummels Hiranyaksha with his mace as he rescues the Earth goddess Bhudevi from the depths of the ocean where the horned demon has tried to drown her. Varaha wields Vishnu’s mace and disc in his right hands and holds the lotus and conch in his left, alluding to Varaha’s animalistic power and divine compassion. Notice the way the artist has depicted the lower bodies in battle below the surface of the turbulent and murky cosmic ocean. This contrasts with Varaha’s calm upward gaze as he brings order out of chaos. The Earth, effortlessly balanced on Varaha’s tusk, is painted with a single cow, representing her divine bounty.

The lotus flowers arched over the head of Varaha locates the battle between the third avatar of Vishnu and the demon Hrianyaksha in the water. Standing atop the dramatically arched body of the defeated demon, he casually balances his consort, the Earth goddess Bhudevi, on his elbow as she folds her hands in gratitude. On the lower left, a nagini (serpent deity) echoes her gesture of reverence. Varaha’s upturned snout and anthropomorphized smile create a sense of playfulness in this image while his muscular form emphasizes his strength.

The demon Hiranyakashipu is slain by the man-lion Narasimha as his wife and son look on in awe of the fourth avatar of Vishnu. Hiranyakashipu’s torment began with a boon whereby he could not be killed by man or animal, inside or outside, on Earth or in the sky, or by any weapon. When Hiranyakashipu attempts to eliminate all of Vishnu’s worshippers, including his son Prahlad, Narasimha manifests to circumvent the boon’s conditions and kill the demon. The half-man, half-animal Narasimha breaks free from a red pillar that is neither inside nor outside, places him Hiranyakashipu on his lap, which is neither on Earth nor in the sky, and tears open his abdomen with his claws. Hiranyakashipu’s intestines become a garland around Narasimha’s neck. Prahlad stands to the right with a calm expression, his devotion for Vishnu so strong that he accepts the violent death of his father.

Unlike typical portrayals of Vamana, here the fifth avatar of Vishnu is not depicted as a dwarf. Instead, the blue-skinned deity appears twice in the painting, once as a sage seated in the upper left corner of the painting, and again as a four-armed giant at the center of the painting.

To dethrone the arrogant demon-king Bali and return control of the universe to the gods, Vamana disguises himself as a priestly sage and attends a horse sacrifice Bali has commissioned for the prosperity of his kingdom. In the upper left, Bali and his attendants welcome the sage to the sacrifice with a foot-washing, collecting the blessed water in a golden pot. Bali then offers to Vamana the amount of land the sage can traverse in three steps. At the center of the painting, Vamana accepts this offer by expanding into his form that fills the three worlds, Trivikrama, the “god of three strides.” With his first step, he covers the whole earth; with his second, the heavens, and his body fills the space between. Finally, his third step lands on Bali’s head, banishing him to the netherworld. Bali, before his descent, touches Trivikrama’s foot in submission, while his subjects worship the god with music and deities celebrate in the sky.

Wielding his powerful axe, Parashurama battles King Arjuna Kartavirya, whose many arms extend beyond the border of the painting. Parashurama, Vishnu’s sixth avatar, was the child of the sage Jamadagni. While visiting Jamadagni’s hermitage, the king with a thousand arms stole the sage’s wish-fulfilling cow. This painting captures a moment of conflict as Parashurama retaliates against King Arjuna Kartavirya. Having killed his charioteer, Parashurama now battles the king, whose dismembered arms fall to the bottom of the page. The wish-fulfilling cow, depicted here as a pair, escapes at the top of the scene.

Parashurama’s blue skin and sacred sandals portray him as a divine incarnation of Vishnu facing off against a king who is sometimes described as a demon. This story also illustrates the conflict between warring clans of brahmins (priestly class) and kshatriyas (ruling class) on earth. After Parashurama defeats their father, the kshatriya king’s sons kill the brahmin sage Jamadagni in revenge. Full of rage, Parashurama wipes out twenty-one generations of kshatriyas. With his axe held high, Parashurama (whose name translates as “Rama with an Axe”) is a complex and fearful avatar.

The Rajasthani text at the top of the painting guides us through Rama’s journey into the forest as he begins his exile. In the upper right, Rama’s father, King Dasharatha, converses with his three wives in his kingdom while, in the center scene, Rama, his brother Lakshmana, and his wife, Sita, prepare to depart in the center scene. Taking on ascetic garb, Lakshmana mats Rama’s hair with the sap of a banyan tree prior to boarding the boats to cross the Ganges. In the upper left, Guha, chief of the Nishadas, a forest tribe, converses with Lakshmana, who watches over Rama and Sita as they sleep on the forest floor. In the lower right, Guha relates these events to Rama’s brother Bharata, who has gone to the forest to beg Rama to return to Ayodhya. Bharata is joined by his brother Shatrughna, a brahmin advisor, and his three mothers, who now wear the modest garb of widows, after King Dasharatha’s death from the heartache of banishing his beloved son. Bharata, too, is overcome with grief, falling forward in a despair after hearing Guha’s account of Rama’s arduous journey.

All the characters in this painting demonstrate steadfast devotion to Rama, the embodiment of righteousness and the seventh avatar of Vishnu. Sita never leaves his side, Lakshmana protects him, and Bharata endures his absence, reluctantly ruling the kingdom until Rama can be installed on the throne.

Devotion, piety, and love are exemplified on the forest floor in this illustration of the Ramayana. Lakshmana caresses Rama’s foot as he delicately removes a thorn while Rama gazes kindly back at him. Rama is not in pain, and peace pervades the atmosphere. Night approaches in this forest meadow, and deer listlessly graze at their feet. Hanuman, the monkey god and devoted companion of Rama, kneels to the right, offering his shoulder for support. The devotion and loyalty of Lakshmana and Hanuman to Rama define the scene, and the three heroes share a moment of tender connection. Rama and Lakshmana wear the humble garb of ascetics during exile in the forest. Sita, the faithful wife of Rama, is not present, having already been snatched away by the demon Ravana.

In Hindu traditions, touching the feet of deities confers blessings, so here Vishnu’s avatar Rama extends his blessings to both Lakshmana and to us, the viewers of this intimate scene.

With his back to the forest of his exile, and facing Ayodhya, Rama is finally crowned king. He sits next to Sita holding his signature bow and arrow. A delicate crescent moon emerges from the tail of Rama’s arrow. A glowing orb of gold leaf around Rama’s head indicates his royalty and his blue skin signals his status as an avatar. Behind Rama, his brothers fan the new king. The middle brother, Bharata, also has blue skin because he is one-quarter Vishnu.

The repeated arches and red accents of the surrounding architecture are inspired by Mughal design. Along the front wall, ashen-skinned renunciants have traveled from the forest to witness the coronation. Rama is also accompanied by his devotee Hanuman, who stands at his feet along with Jambavan and Surgriva, the leaders of the bear and monkey armies. Vibhishana, in his green dress, celebrates Rama’s coronation despite being the brother of the defeated Ravana.

Rama, centered and larger than the other figures, is clearly the focus of all who have come to celebrate his coronation. While his supporters look adoringly towards the new king, Rama gazes outwards over his new kingdom.

In this scene from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna’s cosmic form (Vishvarupa) towers over armies of warring cousins. At the lower left, the great warrior Arjuna, seated in his chariot leads his army into battle despite his hesitation about fighting his members of his own family who advance toward him from the lower right of the painting.

Krishna, Arjuna’s charioteer, encourages him to enter the fight to restore righteousness and, in the large, blue figure in the center of the painting, reveals his true nature as containing all of creation: the heavens, the earth, and the netherworlds. Three golden heavens stretch above his head: Krishna’s heaven at the top, where he dances encircled by the cowherds (gopis); Vishnu’s heaven in the middle, where the blue deity is flanked by worshippers; and Brahma’s heaven in Krishna’s crown, where the god sits, his four heads indicating his omniscience. The heavens are flanked by the Vedas, represented as animal-headed figures.

Krishna’s abdomen contains the earth, which in Hindu cosmology is surrounded by a ring of saltwater, depicted in gray. Hindu shrines fill the earth, and Krishna reenacts his heavenly dance with the gopis.

Multiple eyes peer out from Krishna’s ten jeweled arms, which hold Vishnu’s lotus, two conch shells, and a discus. His fingertips take the forms of cows, horses, camels, and elephants. Under his hands, to the left, Vishnu reclines on the seven-headed serpent, Shesha, as Lakshmi massages his feet; to the right, Shiva and his wife, Parvati appear.

The white palaces in Krishna’s legs represent the netherworlds, where the demon foes of the gods (daityas), the serpent deities (nagas), and other powerful beings reside.

Krishna thus reveals he is more than just an avatar of Vishnu: he is everything.

After subduing him in a battle waged beneath the surface, Krishna rises out of the water and dances on the head of Kaliya, a poisonous snake deity (naga), in this painting of a popular story from the Bhagavata Purana.

Vishnu came to earth as Krishna, the seventh avatar, in order to slay the tyrannical King Kamsa. Raised in a family of cowherds along the banks of the Yamuna river, Krishna’s childhood feats revealed his divine nature even before he could grow up to kill his uncle Kamsa. When Kaliya was poisoning the waters of the Yamuna, causing the cows and cowherds to collapse from the toxicity of his venom (upper right), Krishna, only a child, defeated the snake through dance. Here, he poses for us, haloed and victorious, flute tucked in his belt. He is surrounded by Kaliya’s snake-wives, who worship him as God, touching his feet and offering him flowers and jewels. Understanding that Kaliya is simply doing what snakes do, Krishna sends Kaliya to the ocean where he cannot do harm, thus purifying the waters of the Yamuna and restoring health to the townspeople.

Krishna pauses mid-dance, his outstretched arm reminiscent of the pose he takes when he subdues the venomous serpent, Kalya. His bare bottom shows that he’s a playful child, yet he stands on top of a lotus, a symbol of divinity, and wears the ornaments of a king: dangling earrings, a hairpiece in the back of his head, and an ornate crown. His right hand reaches out in a gesture of fearlessness, conferring blessings.

The Chola Dynasty was one of the great South Indian kingdoms of the medieval period, and Chola bronzes represent some of the most remarkable bronze casting ever done. Statues like this one were made as processional images. Krishna would have been dressed in silks and jewels and carried on two horizontal poles that were threaded through the rings on either side of the statue’s base. Worshippers would have encountered this divine child outside of the temple, held high on the shoulders of his devotees, dancing amongst his followers.

The Buddha sits in a posture of meditation, touching the earth, calling on her to bear witness to his enlightenment. He wears the simple robes of an ascetic and displays some of the auspicious marks with which every Buddha is born: a tuft of hair between his eyes, a protrusion on his head, and dharma wheels on the palms of his hands and soles of feet. He sits cross-legged on a lotus throne, the base of which is decorated with two lions and an elephant. The Bodhi tree, under which the Buddha attained enlightenment, is represented by a single leaf and branch above the Buddha’s halo.

The Buddha rejected the teachings of the sacred scriptures of Hinduism, the Vedas, which require devotees to make offerings to gods to gain happiness. He preached that one should find true happiness — liberation from the cycle of rebirth — by renouncing the world and becoming an ascetic. The tradition of Buddhism flourished independently alongside Vaishnavism, predating the first sacred texts to mention the word avatar, and flourishing in India up until the time of the Pala Empire, the last major Buddhist kingdom in India.

Leaning against a round pillow on a golden throne, the Buddha here sits not as a renunciant, but as Vishnu. In contrast to the sculpture at left, where he wears only the robes of a monk, here the Buddha wears a crown, necklaces, earrings, and the yellow garment often worn by Vishnu’s avatars, embellished with gold. His eyes are not cast downward in meditation, but instead engage with the viewer, and the vertical saffron line on his forehead marks him as a worshipper of Vishnu. While the Buddha in the sculpture has only two arms, here he has four, like Vishnu.

The Vishnu Purana describes a time when the demons had become invincible through their adherence to the teachings of the Vedas. To weaken the demons, Vishnu took the form of the Buddha, who deludes them into rejecting the proper worship of the gods. Here, the Buddha holds his scriptures in his hands, offering his teachings of renunciation to his demon devotees, who flank him. The Buddha is thus a controversial figure in the lists of avatars. Although Puranic texts name him as an avatar, they refer to him as a teacher of false dharma. Some scholars view the Buddha’s inclusion as an avatar as a literary tactic to incorporate and absorb competing schools of dharma.

Kalki’s golden halo blocks our view of his shining sword as he leads the bejeweled white horse Devadatta. The horse’s orange legs are typical of North Indian painting, but Devadatta himself is far from ordinary. His ornate wings will swiftly pilot Kalki as he saves the world by destroying it.

According to the Hindu philosophy of cyclical time, the world is currently in a kali yuga, or ‘age of strife.’ The quality of human life has deteriorated significantly. Wealth has become the sole determinant of merit, brute force has replaced reason, religion has devolved into business, and scholarship has succumbed to triviality. Kalki’s job is to end the kali yuga and usher in a new krita yuga, a golden age of dharma, piety, and righteousness.

A few people have claimed to be Kalki, and some of them are understood by followers to be the avatar, yet the kali yuga persists.

Gracefully posed in the triple-bend (tribhanga) posture, Vishnu stands supreme, surrounded by his avatars and holding the weapons of other deities.

His front four arms, now lost, likely held his four attributes; the base of his mace still visible next to his right foot. His other arms hold many other weapons, including two associated with the god Shiva, the trident and the skullheaded club (khatvanga).

His legs are flanked by smaller standing figures; two hold the discus and conch, personifying Vishnu’s attributes. The female standing to the right of his conch may be his consort, Lakshmi, while Vishnu’s vehicle (vahana), the manbird Garuda, stands to the left of the discus, with a serpent hood and wings.

Six avatars frame this impressive form of Vishnu. On the upper left, Varaha, the boar, balances Bhudevi, the earth goddess, on his knee. On the upper right, the man-lion Narasimha disembowels the demon king Hiranyakashipu. Seated figures include the Buddha, legs crossed in meditation; Vamana the dwarf, holding his parasol; Balarama, Krishna’s snake-hooded, plough-holding brother, who is often considered an avatar; and Kalki, with his horse. Vishnu here is many gods in one, seeking to preserve the cosmic order.

Representations of the avatars of Vishnu are not only found in courtly paintings and temple sculpture, but also in everyday objects. Ganjifa is a card game introduced to India by the Mughals in the sixteenth century. Each region under Mughal rule adapted the game to fit their cultural norms. Sawantwadi Ganjifa cards like these depict the avatars of Vishnu. The cards are split into ten suits of twelve cards, one suit for each avatar. The avatar card serves as the “king” and the solider card represents the “jack.” There are also ten cards in each suit, numbered one through ten. The key on the opposite side shows how each suit is classified according to color and symbol.

These cards highlight the duality of Vishnu’s nature, showing both his violent and peaceful sides. Rama’s card shows him poised to kill Ravana, the demon king with ten heads and twenty arms. Conversely, in the Krishna card, he sits at peace, honored by Garuda, Vishnu’s vehicle with the wings of a bird and the body of a man.

The cards here seem to be combined from different, incomplete desks. Notice that there are two Vamanas (the dwarf) but Narasimha (the man-lion) is missing. Some of the cards have different decorative borders as well.