page_title: Vithoba
section_title: Central image
hierarchical_section_title: Vithoba / Origins and development / Central image
caption_attribution_description: English: Details on Cave 6 This is a photo of ASI monument number&#160; N-MP-286.
context_page_description: Vithoba, also known as Vithal and Panduranga, is a Hindu deity predominantly worshipped in the Indian state of Maharashtra. He is generally considered as a manifestation of the god Vishnu or his avatar, Krishna. Vithoba is often depicted as a dark young boy, standing arms akimbo on a brick, sometimes accompanied by his main consort Rakhumai.
  Vithoba is the focus of an essentially monotheistic, non-ritualistic bhakti-driven Varkari faith of Maharashtra and the Haridasa faith of Karnataka. Vithoba Temple, Pandharpur is his main temple. Vithoba legends revolve around his devotee Pundalik who is credited for bringing the deity to Pandharpur, and around Vithoba's role as a saviour to the poet-saints of the Varkari faith. The Varkari poet-saints are known for their unique genre of devotional lyric, the abhang, dedicated to Vithoba and composed in Marathi. Other devotional literature dedicated to Vithoba includes the Kannada hymns of the Haridasa and the Marathi versions of the generic aarti songs associated with rituals of offering light to the deity.
context_section_description: The physical characteristics of the central murti (image) of Vithoba at Pandharpur, and various textual references to it, have inspired theories relating to Vithoba worship. Sand concludes, from a version of Pundalik's legend in the Skanda Purana (see Legend below), that two distinct murtis must have existed at Pandharpur—one each of tirtha and kshetra type. The earlier one was a tirtha murti, an image purposely sited near a holy body of water (tirtha), in this case facing west, on the Bhima riverbed, near the Pundalik shrine. The later murti, according to Sand, was a kshetra murti, located at a place of holy power (kshetra), in this case facing east, on the hill where the current temple has stood since about 1189. Thus, Sand proposes that the worship of Vithoba may predate the temple itself.
  Deleury suggests that although the temple may have been built in the 13th century, given the Hemadpanthi style architecture, the statue of Vithoba is of an earlier style so may have been carved for an earlier, smaller shrine that existed in Pandharpur. The workmanship of the image is earlier than the style of the Yadava (1175–1318), the Anhivad Chalukya (943–1210) and even the Ajmer Chohans (685–1193) eras. Although no other existing Vishnu temple has iconography like Pandharpur's Vithoba, Deleury finds similarities between the Pandharpur image and the third-century, arms-akimbo Vishnu images at Udaygiri Caves, Madhya Pradesh but declares that they are from different schools of sculpture.
caption: An arms-akimbo Vishnu from Udaygiri Caves.
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