Harihara

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In Harihara imagery, Shiva is represented as the right half of the deity, his vertical third eye, lightly incised into the forehead, truncated at the Vishnu divide. The facial features are undifferentiated, unlike in their Indian counterparts, where a masculine and feminine cast is given to each half. This Harihara makes clear the extent to which the Khmer conception differentiated the two deities only in the partition of the headdress into a combined jatamukuta-miter and in the provision of half of a third eye on Shiva’s side. The popularity of this hybrid deity was largely confined to the seventh century in Cambodia. cat. no. 92

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.

Metropolitan Museum of Art