Krishna's Butter Ball, Mahabalipuram
1904
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1904
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Krishna's Butter Ball, Mahabalipuram is a 1904 by Unidentified Photographer, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a big round rock balanced on a tiny slope, with a few people in old-fashioned clothes standing around it. This rock is called Krishna’s Butter Ball. It’s been sitting in the same spot for over a thousand years, part of an ancient temple site. The name comes from a story about the god Krishna, who could lift something this heavy as easily as butter. The photo was taken when tourists first started visiting the site. If you like this mix of nature and myth, look up *early 20th century* photos of India’s landmarks.
Mahabalipuram is a site on India’s southeastern coast where numerous rock-cut temples and sculptures were carved during the early 600s. The site includes a remarkable, naturally occurring boulder that became known popularly as Krishna’s Butter Ball, thereby merging a geological phenomenon with sacred narrative. If baby Krishna could crawl while holding this monolith as effortlessly in his hand as a ball of butter, he must be a magnificently powerful god. Colonial-era tourists enjoy their excursion to the site with no indication that they recognized its sanctity. Photographs such as this would…
It was popular during the early 1900s to tone silver gelatin photographs with gold to give them a warm glow.
Read the full account in the museum source.
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