Pillar sculptures are a treat and when they are in the hands of a master story teller – then its double the entertainment. Sadly, most of these tales have been lost on us, and so we cannot appreciate what is said by the sculptor. We take one such sculpture today from Perur.

Bordering the side of the shops, most visitors would miss this interesting tell tale or tale telling sculpture. We need to did back into the British Univ archives to dig out this frame.

Can’t find him, here you go.

To give you an orientation, the steps you see are the steps to the Kanagasabhai. so you can visualise where this pillar is. Present day, rope included he is like this.

But what intrigued us was this cast away broken pillar with the same motif.

A closeup of him again.

While talking with Artist Padmavasan, he mentioned that he had sketched this pillar as well and shared his with us.

So what is the story depicted in this panel – well, we saw the entire episode carved in the Sesharaya Mandaba in Srirangam in a previous post. Here you go..

Great Escape from a croc’s belly

But how did the pillars break – and is it a replica that we see today ?