A figure of Garuda possibly from a larger multi-figure shrine, copper alloy, South India, 1800-1821

A standing figure of Garuda with his hands in the anjali mudra and vestigal wings. He stands on a simple base with beading above a lotus pedestal on a flat base which may have slotted into a larger multi-figure Vishnu shrine.

Transferred from the India Museum in London to the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A) in 1879. The India Museum Slips, No 9038, states that it may have come from the 'McKenzie Collection'. It was believed at the time to represent Bharata, the half brother of Rama. 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, in 1754, 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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