Varaha as an avatar of Vishnu; Sculpture, zinc alloy, Benares, ca.1780s

The four armed avatar stands with the body of a human but the head of boar. He wears an ornamented headdress which encircles the front half of his head and he has a floral garland and necklace round his neck together with bangles, anklets and a sacred thread looped across his body. His four arms originally held attributes of Vishnu, namely a chakra, conch, gada and open lotus blossom as depicted in a drawing published in Moor (1861), but only the stumps of these have survived in the avatar's hands. He stands on a circular plinth with a moulded rim decorated with lotus petals.

Donated by Sir Charles Wilkins to the India Museum and transferred to the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A) in 1879. The figure is numbered 300 in the India Museum Slip Books. Sir Charles Wilkins, F.R.S. (1749-1836) was a founding member with William Jones of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. He trained as a printer and joined the East India Company as a writer arriving in India in 1770 where he gained the support of Warren Hastings, the Governor General, who encouraged him to further his linguistic studies in Sanskrit. This resulted among other publications on Sanskrit grammar, language and literature in the first translation of the Bhagavad Gita into English in 1785. He returned to England in 1786 and subsequently became the first Director and Librarian of the East India Company’s library at India House in 1800. His collection of zinc alloy deities which he had commissioned while in Benares (now Varanasi) was published in The Hindu Pantheon by Edward Moor in London in 1810.

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