These balustrades in the form of mythical animals would have flanked an entrance staircase to a Hindu temple. This pair of sculptures take the form of a hybrid lion-bird, depicted clasping a winged creature in lion-jaws and ensnaring it in a serpent-like tail. Such fantastic composite creatures are often depicted in temple balustrades and gateways in south Indian art, typically in a hybrid lion-bird form, as here.

Orderly drill holes which follow the incised patterning of the surface detail reveal traces of copper. This suggests that the sculpture originally had inlay decoration, or more probably sheet-copper cladding. This cladding is seen in temples today in southern India, especially in the decoration of altars and approaching stairs. Copper cladding was typically gilded to create an effect of great splendour. It was intended to dazzle the devotees as they stepped from blazing daylight into the dark recesses of the temple interior.

The temple that housed these balustrades was probably built under the energetic patronage of the Vijayanagar rulers of the Deccan. The Vijayanagar capital was at Hampi, in northern Karnataka, but their control extended east into Andhra Pradesh. The dark variegated granite suggests these balustrades came from a place in the southern Deccan, as yet unidentified but probably in the region of Mysore.