Goat-headed deities in ancient Indian sculpture

Abstract

Starting with the oldest preserved monuments, depictions of animals used in a religious context are quite common in Indian art. For the record, two such main groups can be distinguished: 1. whole animal figures (copied in accordance with nature);1) 2. hybrid representations in which part of the image is human and part animal. Most often, in the latter case, the animal element is the head or face. An example is Varaha – one of the incarnations of Vishnu, undoubtedly the most widespread hybrid image in India (Fig. 1). In this analysis,2) however, I would like to focus on less popular fig-