Lord Varaha, the third of Vishnu’s dashavataras, is the most instantly recognizable of the incarnations. The word ‘Varaha’ is Sanskrit for boar; and while some iconographies feature Varaha as a pig-shaped deity, the painting that you see on this page is of an anthropomorphic boar-headed human-bodied entity. Lord Varaha is possessed of eight arms (ashtabhujadhari) and clad in a flame-colored dhoti. In fact, it is the predominant color in the palette of this mural.
