Iconography is the fascinating study of symbols, themes, and subject matter in the visual arts. A particularly interesting sub-field of iconography is the study of religious art. I grew up consuming images of various Hindu gods and Christian divinities, believing that the respective symbols originated in their corresponding religious ideologies. It took many, many years of staring at art across cultures and religions and time periods to understand that humans love the same symbols no matter their religious context. The surprising corollary that followed from this conclusion was that the same icons represented different gods in different time periods of human history!
Case in point: the infant deity. In Kerala, the infant deity worshiped in most Hindu households is Krishnan. He is represented as a chubby baby, eating butter out of a pot. In some pictures, one hand is holding the pot, while the other is by the mouth; in some other pictures, one hand is in the pot, while the other holds it; in some other pictures, one hand is by the mouth or holding the butter, and the other hand is holding something else, such as his flute. There is a conical peacock feather on his head. Each aspect of the iconography is so well described through Puranic stories that any Hindu child seeing these pictures of infant Krishnan will easily recognize him as such.
Or will they? See the pictures below.
These statues also represent an infant deity. He is holding a pot in one hand. In one representation, his other hand is in the pot; in another representation, his other hand is by his mouth. There is a conical shape on his head, similar though not quite, to the peacock feather on Krishnan’s head. Indeed, he looks remarkably like infant Krishan. But he is not. He is infant Horus, called Harpocrates by Greeks and Romans, revered in ancient Egypt, from well-nigh 6000 BCE all the way into Roman times ca. 200 CE. The pot holds honey, not butter, according to Egyptian myths. And the conical shape on his head? The double crown of pharaonic Egypt. The iconography between this deity worshiped thousands of years ago and the currently worshiped Hindu deity Krishnan is so similar that they can be easily confused.
Who came from who? When it comes down to the basic premise of any religion — love of the divine, does this question really matter?
