12th century optical illusion of elephant or bull

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/12/08/12th-century-optical-illusion-of-elephant-or-bull.html

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This is called a Rishabha Kunjaram - literally “bull-elephant”. We actually find it in a lot of old temples but Darasuram is one of the more prominent ones.

A traditional sculptor once explained it as a kind of practice sculpture that’s done to explore the medium. There are many similar patterns that get repeated…

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Just to give another example of this genre, here’s a horse made of women:

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Wonder if it has ties to this creature, that has been known since ancient Greece: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantomime_horse image

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The greatest Carole Burnett skit of all time.

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Men ‘getting by’ on the backs on women; same as it ever was…

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LONG before Giuseppe Arcimboldo.

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Oh, and also, I didn’t see at first that this was Praveen Mohan!

Just FYI, this guy is a complete ancient aliens type crank. He spends half his videos marveling about “how the ancients could have known this”, pointing to things like a carving of a bicycle that was put in there by an early 20th century renovation (which anyone serious in Indian heritage circles already knows, for example).

At one point, I wanted to do a debunk of him, but I could never sit through a full video to do that…

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