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Perhaps the most immediately impressive of all Guptan sculptures is the Great Boar, carved in relief at the entrance of a cave at Udayagiri near Bhīlsā. The body of the god Viṣṇu, who became a mighty boar to rescue the earth from the cosmic ocean, conveys the impression of a great primeval power working for good against the forces of chaos and destruction, and bears a message of hope, strength and assurance. The greatness of the god in comparison with his creation is brought out by the tiny female figure of the personified earth, clinging to his tusk. The deep feeling, which inspired the carving in this figure, makes it perhaps the only theriomorphic image in the world’s art, which conveys a truly religious message to modern man.45
There is virtually no historical element in Basham’s appreciation of this piece. This emerges in the interpretation by H.C. Raychaudhuri, who writes:
According to sacred legends Viṣṇu in the shape of a Boar had rescued the earth in the aeon of universal destruction. It is significant that the worship of the Boar Incarnation became widely popular in the Gupta-Chalukya period. The poet Viśākhadatta actually identifies the man in whose arms the earth found refuge when harassed by the Mlechchhas, who ‘shook the yoke of servitude from the neck’ of his country, with the Varāhītanu (Boar form) of the Self-Existent Being. Powerful emperors both in the north and south recalled the feats of the Great Boar, and the mightiest ruler of a dynasty that kept the Arabs at bay for centuries actually took the title of Ādivarāha or the Primeval Boar. The Boar Incarnation then symbolized the successful struggle of Indians against the devastating floods issuing from the regions outside their borders that threatened to overwhelm their country and civilization in a common ruin.46
The reference to the poet Viśākhadatta in the passage just cited is an allusion to the concluding verse of Viśākhadatta’s drama Mudrārākṣasa which, while dealing with events of the time of Candragupta
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