Matsya Avatara (Vishnu's Fish Avatar)
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Inexpensive prints of Hindu gods became widely available in late nineteenth-century India as a direct result of the introduction of lithography presses. This new technology was intended to serve the colonial administration and aid the propagation of Christianity by missionary organizations, but it was quickly deployed to create a new form of popular Hindu devotional art. Here we see Vishnu’s first avatar, his fish incarnation, embracing four joyful infants, evoking his role as savior of primeval man (Manu) from the Great Flood. The number four alludes to the Four Vedas, India’s vast corpus of ancient divine knowledge, which Vishnu rescues from the deluge.
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