1,200-Year-Old Sculpture Unearthed in Southern India

TAMIL NADU, INDIA—The Hindu reports that an eighth-century A.D. sculpture of Lord Vishnu, one of the principal Hindu deities, was unearthed along the banks of the Gundaru River in southern India by a team of researchers from Madurai Kamaraj University. M. Maruthu Pandiyan of the Madurai Government Museum said the style of the sculpture corresponds to the Pandya dynasty, a Tamil-speaking group that ruled in south India and Sri Lanka as early as the fourth century B.C. In the sculpture, Lord Vishnu is depicted with four arms. Two of them are held vertically, while the other two hold a broken disc-like weapon called a chakra and a conch shell. “The chakra and the conch are the main features of the Pandya period,” Pandiyan said. Lord Vishnu is also shown wearing a necklace of large gemstones, he added. To read about a Hindu temple complex destroyed by Ulugh Khan in the fourteenth century, go to "India's Temple Island."