A year ago while travelling in a city bus in Chennai, on the Kamarajar Salai near the lighthouse, I was surprised to notice the sculpture of a bull and a bull elephant with combined heads. The motif had been carved in a few bas-reliefs in ancient Indian Art, like in Cave No. 1 (c.578) at Badami, on a pillar of Sri Virupaksha temple (c.740) at Pattadakal, on a balustrade of the Nataraja-Mantapa in Sri Airavateswara temple (12th century) at Darasuram, in Sri VijayaVittala (c.1513) and Sri Tiruvengalanatha (c.1534) temples, both at Hampi, and also in Sri Lankan Art, in a South Indian ivory carving, in a modern ceiling painting in Sri Rameswaram temple and so on, but not as a round and freestanding sculpture. Though initially misinterpreted as a fight between two animals, A K Coomaraswamy had identified the composition as that of Vrishabha-Kunjara.
In ancient Indian Art, it is not at all uncommon to find various types of composite creatures, like the carving in a medallion of the Bharhut Stupa (300-200 BCE) that shows Makara, which comprises the head, forelegs and part of the belly of an elephant, and the mouth of a crocodile and the tail of fish. Unlike such mythical creatures, in the unique Vrishabha-Kunjara, both the bull and the bull elephant, in all the known carvings, had been represented as natural and true-to-life kind of animals.
Of course, in reality, any bull would be short in height than a bull — or cow elephant. But, in the composition, the artist(s) had come out with such a unique mode of representation that it deceives this aspect, and presents both the animals nearly as a sequel in stature and power. In the composition, in one instance, the elephant’s temples, tusks and trunk with its curled tip form respectively the snout, horns and hump of the bull, and vice versa. The ‘visual-pun’ becomes vivid, if on the spot of a bas-reliefs, anyone closes one side of the composition with the palm of one’s hand, and then repeats the same by closing the other half. C Sivaramamurti has stated that the motif was “quoted as an example in philosophic disquisitions regarding the oneness of Siva and Shakti, and Purusha and Prakruti.” However, two different male animals may not be representing one male divinity, Siva, and another female divinity, Shakti, and also two Nature Spirits of different genders, Purusha (male) and Prakruti (female).
The idea behind such a combination of two different male animals seems to date back to the Vedic period viz much before the time of the Puranas in which a bull became the vehicle of Siva, and the all-white bull elephant, Airavata, became the mount of Indra. As pointed out by Jan Gonda in a study, no Vedic god or goddess possesses any animal as their vehicle. The original symbolism of the motif seems to have been long forgotten, but still lingers in the form of Vrishaba-Kunjara, which had been carved as a ‘minor work’ in a few enlisted edifices. Further, in an oleograph, Raja Ravi Varma had depicted the motif in which Vishnu with a mace and a conch in his hands is shown seated on Airavata along with Lakshmi, who in turn is giving alms to Siva seated on the bull along with his wife, Parvati, and their son, Ganapati. Such an unprecedented imagination of the artist had even influenced later temple sculptures, which were moulded not with the traditional stucco, but with the modern material, cement.
In the Rig Veda, an elephant, or more specifically a bull elephant, is known by a few names, including mriga, the wild animal, and mriga-hastin or simply hastin (a wild animal with a hand). Similarly, a bull is known by various names, including Vrishabha, which means a man or manly. Many Vedic divinities had either been hailed as a bull or compared with the power of the same animal. The might of a few Vedic gods had been compared with the combined power of a bull elephant and a bull. For instance, Agni was hailed in a stanza, “Having two births, he stretches toward threefold food. In a year what was eaten has grown again. With the mouth and tongue of one (of his forms), he is a thoroughbred bull; with the other, he drags down the trees (like) an elephant.”
Airavata, which was not mentioned in the Vedic literature, had been given a prominent position in the Ramayana in which Valmiki, the first Sanskrit poet, had addressed Rama as “O bull among men,” and added further, “Maatangi gave birth to elephants. The mighty elephant Airavata who became the lord of the world, was born to Iravati.” It is noteworthy that Valmiki had addressed Rama as the ‘bull among men’, and hailed Airavata as ‘the lord of the world’. The same status for the all-white Elephant/Airavata, to the best of my reading, figures in no other ancient Indian texts. For, in the later Puranas, the bull and the all-white Airavata had lost their independent entity, and became respectively the vehicles of Siva and Indra.
The brief references in the Rig Veda and the Ramayana, which highlight the combined power and significance of a bull and a bull elephant, seem to have taken the unique visual shape of Vrishabha-Kunjara in which the natural form of both the animals had been retained without adding any distortion or mythical imagination.
Srinivas Sistla
Associate Professor, Department of Fine Arts, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam
(sistlasrini@gmail.com)