Monkey General Hanuman (c. 1000): Art, History and Details

Monkey General Hanuman (c. 1000) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Hanuman is one of the most popular heroic figures of the epic Ramayana. In the story, he was indispensable in the search for the abducted wife of Rama, an incarnation of Vishnu. He is able to fly through the air and lift mountains, but here he is shown as a humble servant of the god. His gestures signify his humility and he bows slightly in reverence to his master. Bronzes during the Chola period spanning the 800s to 1200s were solid cast, using the lost-wax method. Each one is unique and would have been kept in the treasury of the temple until the festival day when the presence of the deity is invited to reside in the sculpture, which is then bathed, dressed, and paraded through the streets. This figure would have been paraded with a group of other images depicting Rama, his wife, and his brother.

Object facts

• Title: Monkey General Hanuman
• Date: c. 1000
• Culture: Southern India, Chola period (900s–1200s)
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: bronze
• Dimensions: height: 58.4 cm (23 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1980.26

A detail from the museum

Hanuman stands on a lotus pedestal with slightly upturned petals.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1980.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 68, no. 6 (1981): 163–219.
• Dehejia, Vidya. The Sensuous and the Sacred: Chola Bronzes from South India. New York: American Federation of Arts, 2002.
• Czuma, Stanislaw J., "A Procession of the Gods", Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine. Vol. 43 no. 06, Summer 2003

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.