The bond with nature

It's Varaha Jayanti this Sunday, celebrating the appearance of Lord Vishnu's third avatar as the celestial boar. While we tend to concentrate our worship on the Narasimha, Rama and Krishna avatars, we are not known to pay much heed to this particular avatar of the Lord. But our ancestors did, and how. Two superstar images of the Varaha avatar are beautifully found on either side of the Vindhyas. I mean the Varaha sculpture at the Udayagiri Caves, from the 5th-century Gupta period, close to the Sanchi Stupa in Madhya Pradesh, and at Badami Cave 3 in Karnataka, from the 6th-century Chalukya period. They are two of India's finest rock-cut masterpieces ever, not just as Varaha images. They depict Varaha rescuing Mother Earth, Bhudevi, from the cosmic waters where she had been kidnapped by the demon Hiranyaksha. At Udayagiri, we get to see the massive statue commissioned by King Chandragupta II. It is a colossal 13-foot-high, open-air rock-cut relief carved into a shallow cliff niche. It features a powerful male body with a wild boar's head, the form called Naravaraha. He steps firmly on a subdued serpent king at the base and lifts Bhudevi gracefully on his broad shoulder. He exudes raw power and might. At Badami, Cave 3 was inaugurated in November 578 CE, in the reign of King Kirtivarman Mangalesha. It contains a red sandstone monolithic relief, showing a dynamic Bhuvaraha stance, where Varaha lifts Bhudevi, who clings to his tusk. It is set against the backdrop of multi-hooded water serpents, and surrounded by rich decorative carvings, bracket figures and celestial witness panels. What punches your gut is the emotion of love and the feeling of protection emanating from these sculptures. Our sculptors knew what they were trying to say through their art, not only to their generation but also to those who would come long after them, namely us. Other stunning carvings of Bhuvaraha appear at Aihole in Karnataka from the early Chalukya period, and at Mahabalipuram from the reign of the Pallavas. The Varaha temple in Khajuraho has a majestic image of Varaha as a wild boar, dated between 900 and 925 CE.