The elephant and the crocodile

Murals assume their audience. The Gajendra Moksham on the staircase wall at Krishnapuram was painted for people who already knew what they were looking at, which is why it gives you the climax and none of the setup.

The story

Gajendra was the king of the elephants. Bathing in a lake with his herd, he was seized by the foot by a crocodile — in most tellings a gandharva serving out a curse in that form. The two fought. Neither could win, and the struggle is said to have lasted an age: the elephant unable to drag himself out, the crocodile unable to pull him under.

Eventually Gajendra came to the end of his strength. At that point, and only at that point, he lifted a lotus in his trunk and called on Vishnu. Vishnu came down on Garuda and released him.

The theology is unusually blunt for a rescue story. What saves the elephant is not his strength, because his strength had already failed and been shown to be useless. It is the surrender of it. Gajendra Moksham means the liberation of Gajendra, and the liberation is as much from his own capability as from the crocodile.

What is on the wall

Vishnu on Garuda occupies the centre, wings spread across the composition. The green elephant is at the right with his trunk raised, the crocodile at his foot at the water’s edge. The rest of the surface — and it is most of it — is spectators: ranks of gods and sages, seated and standing, watching the rescue.

The palette is ochre, green and earth red in natural pigment, which is the standard Kerala mural range. Below the main panel there is a separate frieze of seated figures within a decorated border, and at the upper left the wall is damaged.

Why it is on a staircase

The placement is the odd thing. Most Kerala murals of this subject are inside temples. This one is in a secular building, on the wall beside a staircase, in a palace put up by a king.

The tradition offered locally is that it was sited near the palace tank so that the Travancore rulers could make their devotions to it after their morning bath. Whether or not that is the actual reason, it describes accurately how the painting functions: it is on a route rather than in a sanctum. You do not enter it. You pass it, and stop.

There is something fitting in that for a painting about the moment strength gives out. A shrine image is approached deliberately, with preparation. This one catches you on the stairs.