Although representations of fantastic or composite animals first appear in Indian art around the 2nd century BCE at the renowned Buddhist site of Sanchi, Madhya Pradish, they began to flourish in earnest in later Indian painting dating from the 16th–19th century. This later flowering was comprised of two distinct visual expressions known as the Mughal and Hindu traditions. The Mughal tradition, as exemplified by M.85.237.26, features an intricate merging of disparate motifs including animal, human, and demonic source images. The Hindu tradition, in contrast, typically presents animals or other means of conveyance assembled from human figures, such as this LACMA painting. Horses, elephants, and camels are the most common composite animals. See Robert J. Del Bontà, "Reinventing Nature: Mughal Composite Animal Painting," in Flora and Fauna in Mughal Art, ed. Som Prakash Verma (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 1999), pp. 69–82.
Here, a composite horse is being ridden by a richly ornamented, blue-skinned Krishna holding a lotus. The horse is composed of five human figures, two mustachioed males and three females. The farthest left female holds her forearms extended to form the horse’s head. On the opposite end, in her upraised left hand a female carries an honorific fly whisk made with a white yak tail (cauri or chowri) that functions visually as the horse’s tail. A comparable Hindu composite horse is in the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (1988.51.11).
