Makara

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Names & Creature Profile

Makara, written मकर in Sanskrit, names a water-being whose body can combine a crocodile’s jaws with an elephant-like snout. In Himalayan art it inhabits rivers and lakes, carries deities and frames gateways. The Project Himalayan Art glossary identifies a more particular association in the Kathmandu Valley: Newar artists give the makara the significance of a rain cloud. A creature beside a river and a creature pouring rain from the sky can consequently share one name. [2]

Historical Record

One of the smallest surviving examples fits comfortably within the scale of a hand. The Metropolitan Museum of Art dates its terracotta makara to the second or first century BCE, during the Shunga period, and suggests Kaushambi in Uttar Pradesh as its place of origin. It is 18.1 centimetres long. Modelled details remain along the worn, curved body; a conspicuous opening pierces the head. The museum proposes that the creature once had wheels and may have been a child’s toy. That possibility changes the imagined movement: an aquatic being could have travelled over the ground as a small clay object. The wheels no longer survive in the displayed work. [1]

A sandstone Ganga at the Cleveland Museum of Art brings the creature beneath the feet of a river goddess. Made around 700 and attributed to Mathura, the sculpture has lost its head and left arm. Below the surviving figure, the makara’s tail unfolds into foliage. The break at the top exposes a red vein in the stone, which the museum connects with a quarry near Mathura. Damage has removed part of the goddess while uncovering a clue to the material’s origin. The sculpture was made for a temple entrance: a person approaching the sacred interior would encounter the river in human form, supported by a creature of water. [3]

Appearance & Signs

An earthenware makara from eastern Java stretches the body in another direction. LACMA dates it to the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Its head stays low while a scaled, flexible body curls upward into a tall, hollow tail. Elephant trunk, crocodile jaws and fishlike scales belong to the same figure. A small handle ends at a serpent’s head; a floral medallion also survives. The upper end is broken. LACMA identifies the missing element as an offering stand once supported by the raised tail. The tall tail turns an animal ornament into a support: an offering would have rested above the fantastic head. The missing upper element explains why this useful object now resembles an isolated, abruptly broken creature. [8]

Tales & Encounters

Ganga’s descent gives the river goddess’s presence at a doorway its larger story. In LACMA’s account, King Bhagiratha undertakes a thousand years of austerities to bring the heavenly river down to purify his ancestors’ ashes. King Sagara’s sixty thousand sons had disturbed the sage Kapila’s sleep and been incinerated. Ganga agrees to descend, but her torrent would crush the earth. Shiva receives the fall in his hair, breaking its force. The river can cleanse without destroying. [4]

LACMA’s Rajasthan relief, made around 800, sets Ganga on her makara at one end and a guardian associated with Shiva at the other. Female attendants and two flying figures bearing a garland occupy the intervening space. The aquatic creature supports the goddess’s arrival at a human threshold. The museum explains that such river figures marked the entrance to sacred space and purified those passing inward. In the story, water must be made bearable; in the doorway, its divine personification accompanies a worshipper’s approach. [4]

Homeland & Tradition

In early South Asian art, the makara can be small enough to wear. Art historian Harsha Gautam points to paired creatures in a yaksha’s necklace. A yaksha is a nature deity associated with wealth; the watery forms become part of its ornament. Gautam also identifies possible makara images on the crowns of naga kings, beings whose own bodies combine human form with serpents. The essay reads the crown creatures as emblems of an underwater realm. The makara does not replace the naga or become another name for it. An artist can place one water-being upon another, just as a necklace can carry tiny creatures across a human-shaped chest. [10]

In the Kathmandu Valley, the Newar names distinguish the fountain place, hiti, from its projecting spout, hitimanga. In Gautama V. Vajracharya’s account, sunken bathing places and surrounding terraces arrange an approach to the creature’s mouth. Stone and golden fountains are also named for their materials. [5]

Landscape & Associations

The infrastructure continues beyond the decorated face. Vajracharya describes mountain lakes fed by monsoon rain, underground brick canals and catch basins supplying the valley’s fountains. At royal spouts, metal covers stone. The relief is hammered from behind, requiring the maker to imagine the finished face in reverse; the Newar term thvajya means echo work. The visible creature joins the labour of the metalworker to the water carried beneath the city. [7]

A Javanese waterspout at the Met, carved in andesite around the tenth century, reduces that meeting to a compact stone head. A raised snout curves over open jaws surrounding a circular outlet. The passage for water occupies the place where the animal’s mouth opens: the practical hole belongs within the face. Its record identifies Java and the material, but no particular original building. Separated from its building, the head retains two parts of the spout’s work: a carved face for the viewer and a channel for the water. The open mouth marks where the hidden supply once became visible. [9]

Nature & Powers

Makaras appear at the sides of ornamental arches, or toranas. The Himalayan glossary identifies this as one of their common architectural settings. [2]

The arrangement can enclose a smaller act of devotion. In LACMA’s granite Cow Adoring a Shivalinga, made in Tamil Nadu around 800, the cow bends its head to lick Shiva’s sacred emblem as it would lick a calf. An arch rises from makaras at the sides. Lions walk along its outer edges, a fierce face crowns its summit, and a small attendant rides the right-hand makara with hands joined in worship. The creature carries a worshipper while helping form the frame around another. [12]

LACMA connects the image with a local legend of a cow attaining salvation at the Tiruvijayamangai Temple beside the Kollidam River. The museum suggests that the relief once formed a decorative false window on a Shiva temple. This creature-framed opening was something to look into, rather than a doorway to walk through. [12]

Variants & Kindred Beings

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy’s 1931 study places the makara among a wider company of aquatic composites. He distinguishes a water-elephant from the makara, although both can produce vegetation from their mouths in art. Water-horses, fish-tailed bulls and winged water-lions extend the comparison. His proposal is that animal forms could inhabit sky, earth and water with bodies suited to each. This is his interpretation of a group of images, not a rule that every fantastic figure shares one identity. A fish tail offers a connection; the rest of the body and its setting preserve the differences. [11]

Meaning & Belief

The Bhagavad-Gita gives the name a place in a conversation about recognizing the divine. Arjuna asks Krishna how he can understand a presence too vast for ordinary comprehension: among so many appearances, where should his attention rest? In Edwin Arnold’s English translation of Chapter X, Krishna replies through an unfolding series of particular examples. The sun, moon, mountain, tree and spoken syllable become ways of approaching his power. Makar appears among sea creatures, immediately beside Ganges among streams. The sequence continues through wisdom, memory, patience, birth and death. [6]

The answer exceeds a catalogue of exceptional animals. Krishna first locates himself in every creature’s heart, then closes by saying that all splendour and greatness proceed from him. The named makara is one point of attention within that much larger claim. Arjuna has asked for a form through which to contemplate the immeasurable; the reply gives him many. The creature’s brief appearance matters because it participates in that exchange, even though the verse never supplies an anatomy or a separate adventure. [6]

Vajracharya gives the Newar fountain a seasonal meaning. He connects its crowded animal life with the return of monsoon rain and fertility, interpreting the makara as a being of atmospheric as well as terrestrial water. This reading belongs to the valley’s artistic and agrarian setting. A familiar animal appearing beside an impossible one can help people picture the renewal on which both depend. [5]

Later Retellings & Reception

A painted fountain can make the failure of water visible. Vajracharya discusses an eighteenth-century Newar scroll in which a man begs beside a dry makara mouth during drought. Elsewhere in the same painting, water pours abundantly from a fountain and a scene of lovemaking accompanies renewed prosperity. The creature remains recognizable across the contrast. What changes is what its mouth can give. Need and relief become legible through the presence or absence of a stream. [5]

Evidence & Open Questions

The clay model’s possible use as a toy rests on a small surviving feature. Gautam points to the hole through its ears as a possible trace of wheels. The Met describes the model as once wheeled but qualifies its proposed use for play. A working detail can outlast the movement it once made possible. [1][10]

The meaning of an open jaw is equally dependent on its company. Coomaraswamy describes figures emerging from makara mouths or pulling vegetation from them. He also discusses a literary association with extracting a pearl from dangerous jaws. A mouth can thus hold a threat and something precious at once. The surrounding figures determine whether approach means peril, release or abundance. [11]

Sources & Manuscript Notes

The museum records identify the surviving objects and their proposed uses. Vajracharya interprets Newar fountains and paintings; Gautam and Coomaraswamy place aquatic forms among other beings. Arnold’s Chapter X supplies the dialogue about divine appearances. [1][3][4][8][9][5][7][10][11][6]

Toy in the form of a makara ↗
Metropolitan Museum of Art curatorial collective · Metropolitan Museum of Art
2010.207; complete Overview and Artwork Details; enlarged principal photograph
Checked 2026-10-11
Makara ↗
Project Himalayan Art editorial collective · Rubin Museum / Project Himalayan Art · 2022-11-10
Complete definition, published November10,2022
Checked 2026-10-11
↗

Artwork

Illuminated folios

Select a folio to enlarge it. Its caption describes the account, landscape or artistic choices behind the image.

A toothy aquatic creature with a curled elephant-like snout and flowing foliage tail rises beside a rain-fed pool. — Original interpretation of Makara in a Newar fountain-inspired form, with a curling snout and cloud-foliage tail evoking rain and water.

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