One Hindu legend has it that the great sage Kashyapa’s two wives (some legends suggest he had up to twenty-one spouses, but two are mentioned here), Vinata and Kadru, wanted badly to have children. Kashyapa decided to grant this boon to his wives. Kadru requested that she might give birth to a thousand nāga, the powerful half-human half-snake beings that reside in the netherworld (Patala). Vinata, on the other hand, requested only two children, but desired that her two should be equal in power to all of Kadru’s thousand nāga. Kashyapa blessed his wives, and then retreated to the forest to meditate. In due course, Kadru gave birth to a thousand eggs. And, eventually, Vinata laid her two eggs. After five hundred years of incubation, Kadru’s eggs hatched, and out came her brood of nāgas. But Vinata’s eggs remained whole. Vinata became impatient and envious; unable to wait, she prematurely broke open one of her eggs, from which emerged a partially-formed son, Aruna, who would later become the charioteer of the sun god, Surya. Aruna was supposed to have the radiance of the midday sun, but since he was born prematurely, he had only developed the lukewarm glow of early morning. Aruna cursed his mother for her impatience, decreeing that she would become a servant until her second son was born and liberated her.

So it came to pass that Vinata and Kadru engaged in a wager involving the divine horse Uchchaihsravas. When this horse emerged from the Ocean of Milk, one of the divine gifts which emerged from Vishnu’s churning of that ocean, the sisters bet on what colour its tail would be. Vinata asserted, correctly, that it would be white, while Kadru claimed it would be black. When the horse emerged, Kadru deceitfully caused her serpentine sons to intertwine themselves around the horse’s tail such that their scaly skin would make it appear black. Duped by Kadru’s treachery, Vinata lost the bet, and became Kadru’s slave, fulfilling the curse of Aruna. In this context of treachery and oppression, Vinata’s second egg finally hatched, giving rise to Garuda, an immense bird-like being with the features of a man. Since he had been allowed to gestate fully, Garuda was – from the moment of his birth – of immense size, power, radiance and brilliance, so much so that the gods mistook him for one of their own. Since his brother Aruna had never been allowed to achieve his full power, Garuda was imbued with more than his fair share of the power of the nāga promised to him by his father. Garuda immediately sought to free his mother from bondage, confronting Kadru and her nāga sons. They demanded the nectar of the gods, amrita, in order to free her. To obtain this substance was nearly impossible, but with his immense strength, speed and will, Garuda defeated the chief god Indra in battle and stole his nectar, thus freeing his mother. Vishnu, the god who maintains the Universe, was so impressed with Garuda that he offered him a role as his mount or vehicle (vahana), in exchange for which Garuda was made immune from death and from the fear of snakes, and became exalted among the gods.

The tale of Garuda’s birth transcends its mythological framework to become a narrative rich with symbolic meaning. Garuda embodies the ideals of devotion, filial piety, and moral righteousness. His struggle against the nāga and his service under Vishnu symbolise the triumph of the cosmic order over chaos, and his role as an eternal adversary of serpents can be taken to represent the ongoing struggle between good and evil which underpins much Hindu philosophy. An enduring symbol of courage, speed, and loyalty, Garuda is one of the most popular subjects of Hindu art, and has entered the iconography of other Southeast Asian traditions, including Buddhism. His imagery generally accompanied the spread of the worship of his master, Vishnu. Vaishnavism, a major Vishnu-focused branch of Hinduism, spread throughout Southeast Asia from the Fifth Century AD, and it is during this period that the worship of Vishnu spread to the Tarumanagara Kingdom in Java. Even when the succeeding Shailendra Dynasty began to move away from Hinduism towards Buddhism, the worship of Vishnu was tolerated, and syncretism between Hindu and Buddhist motifs became commonplace. This vibrant unity of ideas was turbo-charged by the shifting of power towards the East of Java, where dynasties like the Mataram and Kediri Kingdoms reinvigorated Java’s Hindu roots, and sought to expand the worship of Vishnu in his incarnations as Rama and Krishna. Temple complexes like the Penataran Templem dating from the Twelfth Century AD, indicated the growing appeal of Vaishnavism among the elite, while the retelling of the epics the Rāmāyana and the Mahābārata through the complex medium of shadow puppetry demonstrates the hold that Vaishnavism had on the ordinary people.

This remarkable gold figure of Vishnu riding his mount Garuda is emblematic of the importance that the ruling elite placed on harnessing the emotive and powerful mythos surrounding these two figures. The figure depicts Vishnu as a richly-adored four-armed deity, wearing a mukuta (mahkota in modern Indonesian), a tall golden crown common across Southeast Asia and strongly associated with Hindu-Buddhist concepts of kingship. The Javanese makuta, real examples of which are known from throughout the island’s history (e.g. the crown still used by the Sultan of Kutain Kartanegara), consists of a jamang or siger diadem, which encircles the forehead, while the hair is arranged in a high bun adorned with or encompassed by a tall flat-toped semi-conical structure of gold. He carries four of his most important attributes: the chakra, a wheel which represents the turning of the law, the cycle of time, and the maintenance of the cosmic order, but which reis also a weapon used by Vishnu in suppressing evil, hence this example is serrated; a stylised thunderbolt (vajra), a powerful weapon associated with the chief god Indra, and which can overcome any obstacle; the flywhisk, which is a symbol of royalty, designed to keep insects away from the monarch’s visage when out surveying his territories; and a conch shell (shankha), which was a symbol of purity, cosmic order, and – through its resonance with the primordial sound ‘Om’ – the beginning and sustenance of creation itself, for which Vishnu was responsible.

Vishnu rides on the shoulders of Garuda, who supports his feet with his hands. Garuda himself is depicted as somewhat larger than his master. He has the face, wings, and talons of a bird of prey, with a hooked beak probably derived from the Indian spotted eagle (Clanga hastata). He is depicted as stocky and well-built, with vast wings which – according to some Hindu traditions – could block out the sun. He adopts a semi-crouching position, legs bent in a powerful presaging of forward and upward motion, perhaps explaining why he is steadying the feet of Vishnu. In addition to his vast wings, he is depicted with enormous tail-feathers which, although fanned like those of an eagle or hawk, are far longer in proportion to his body, and may further assimilate him with the Indian peafowl (Pavo cristatus), a symbol of royalty befitting this so-called ‘King of Birds’ (pakshi-rāja). Garuda is himself richly adorned, beyond his own intricately cast feathers. He wears delicate trousers (celana), wide and loos-fitting, allowing for ease of movement and reflecting traditional Javanese modesty, far more so than the simple loincloth worn by Vishnu above him. Around his waist is a bejewelled belt, known as a pending, which acted as both a practical way of securing one’s outfit, and a status-symbol. And finally, the whole ensemble is held together with a long sash which flows over his hips and down his back, called a sampur or selendang. This outfit would have been immediately recognisable to the viewer as the dodot, the clothes worn by Javanese nobility during the most significant of religious and royal ceremonies.

Garuda himself stands on the back of the World Turtle, kurma, who is representative of stability in the Universe. After all, it is kurma who holds the immense weight of the mountains above him, and maintains stability for the earth within the primordial ocean. Vishnu himself once turned into the World Turtle, during the myth of the Churning of the Ocean of Milk, allowing the gods and the demons to stabilise their churning rod – made from Mount Mandara – on his back. Garuda and the turtle represent the cosmically complimentary but opposite qualities of mobility and stability, speed and steadfastness, and the dynamic and the static. Together, Garuda and the World Turtle represent the firm foundations of the Hindu faith, but also the ability of human beings to transcend their current plane of existence, symbolised by Garuda’s upward flight. Entwined around kurma are two serpents, nāga, who must represent both Garuda’s personal role as the nemesis of the serpent race, but also Vishnu’s use of the great serpent Vasuki as a rope to spin the churning pole plungred into the Ocean of Milk.

As a symbol of Vaishnavism’s important hold on Java in the early part of the Middle Ages, this figure is a remarkable testament. But it is also an exceptional example of the art of the goldsmith, which was among Java’s most prestigious modes of artistic expression. As a major centre of power in the Eleventh to Fourteenth Centuries AD, Java was an important importer of gold from neighbouring regions, though an amount of native gold is available on the island. Working with gold purities from around 9 karat to 24 karat, gold was worked through a variety of techniques, such as lost wax (cire perdu) casting – the technique used in this figure – as well as hammering, repoussé, filigree, and embossing, often finished with hand-engraved details. The sheer complexity of the composition achieved here stands as witness to the immense artistry and skill of local metalworkers, which was famed as far as India and China.