Hayagriva; Sculpture, copper alloy, South India, early 19th century

Initially assumed to be Kalki, the future avatar of Vishnu, but the manuscript in the lower left hand confirms that this is the horse-headed Hayagriva regarded as the eighteenth incarnation of Vishnu, who retrieved and protected the Vedas. He holds a conch and slightly crude chakra in his upper hands and sits cross legged on a typical integral engraved South Indian base, with a lotus pedestal above a square plinth. Unusually there is an inscription inside the base, which has not been read.

Transferred from the India Museum in London to the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A) in 1879. The India Museum Slips, No. 9035, misattributed this figure as 'Vishnu in his future avatar, as Kalki'. It came from the Col. McKenzie collection. Colonel Colin Mackenzie was a British antiquarian who completed a major survey of the Mysore kingdom in southern India and became the first Surveyor General of India in 1815. Born in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland, Mackenzie travelled to India in 1783 as an Infantry cadet in the 78th Seaforth Highlanders but in 1786 transferred to become an Engineer in the Madras Army. He spent the remainder of his life in Asia, much of it in southern India, where he carried out a survey of the Nizam of Hyderabad's Dominions (1792-8) and the Mysore Survey (1799-1810), although he also worked in other parts of India and in Java (1811-13). He died in Calcutta in 1821.

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