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Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Interesting Sculptures -Badami Cave temple

Badami - a place in Karantaka, very famous for cave temples. Last year I had been to Badami and Pattadakallu( a village nearby Badami- I will write about this in coming posts.)
In Badami cave temple, all the sculptures are very beautiful. Among those sculptures, I found two sculptures very interesting.
One is the "Elephant and Bull, with common head" sculpture:

If the left side of the body is covered its a Bull  and right side covered it is elephant.
It is clear in the below cropped images:
sculpture
Left side-Elephant

Right side-Bull
When I browsed about this sculpture, I found, this kind of sculpture is present in  Airavateshwara temple (Darasuram-near Tanjore, Tamilnadu)and the world famous heritage centre Hampi (Karnataka). Quite interesting! 
Another sculptures is of Shiva and Parvati, on Nandi (Bull)
It may look normal Shiva Parvati , sculpture. If you observe closely, you can see, Parvati sitting in side saddle position. Parvati's one hand is holding Shiva's waist and another is on the shoulder. Something similar to double riding on a Motor bike :-) Isn't it very interesting?

There are many sculptures in Badami cave temple. I will share about those in the coming posts.

-Until then,
Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,
-Ranjana

10 comments:

  1. Incredible sculptures of great imagination.

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  2. ...this is the caliber of our ancient artists...incredible imagination and capabilities...I'm awe struck...but my humble suggestion Ranjana, you shouldn't have explained the twin head by covering the bodies...if one can't see let them not! How can art be explained? Nonetheless, a big THANKS from me:)for sharing this:)

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  3. A similar bull and elephant statue has been erected near the light house of Marina beach in Chennai...I was awestruck when I saw it...Now I know the source...:) Thanks for sharing!

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  4. Those are great sculptures. Indian heritage is definitely applaudable.

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  5. two in one sculpture. they had great imagination back then.

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  6. Nice pictures Rachna...
    You will find such bull-elephant sculptures in many temples...
    I saw it in Goa, then in Mannargudi temple, Tamil Nadu then you will find it as ahuge sculpture in Santhome road in Chennai.

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  7. Superb pictures and great explanation about sculptures, great work :-) keep posting.

    To know more about Badami please visit below mentioned link:
    http://www.ijaunt.com/karnataka/badami

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  8. We also visited Murdeshwar in 2010 when we went on temple tour of Katnataka..Lovely place..I loved the entire trip.

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