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Vishnu Mounted on Garuda
Not on view
The theme of Vishnu riding his celestial vehicle, the mythical eagle Garuda, was rarely represented in mainland Southeast Asia before the tenth century, when it became popular in Angkorian-period temple art. Its earliest recorded appearance is at the mid-first-millennium moated city of Champasak, southern Laos, where a standing Garuda with traces of the legs of Vishnu survives. Its emergence in India is linked to the Gupta royal household (ca. 320–550), for whom Vishnu was the tutelary deity and Garuda their ensign, and it was widely disseminated from there. This sculpture is one of the few appearances of this subject in Cham art.
cat. no. 78
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