This book, a revised version of the author’s Ph.D. thesis, seeks to ‘highlight processes of socio-religious transforma¬tion within a specific region and cultural context into which iconography provides useful and interesting insights’. The author believes that this approach will fulfill a long-felt need for a meaningful analysis of the evolution of iconographic concepts and their im¬pact on socio-cultural groups and religious systems. In this respect, the study attempts a departure from the usual work on Indian iconography, largely confined to the identi-fication, description and inter¬pretation of divine images and their attributes.
Understandably, the author provides an overview of the historical and cultural back-ground of the emergence of the Vaisnava concepts of the Tamil Country in the period 300 BC—AD 600. She dwells at some length on such con¬cepts as the Pancha vira Narayana, Vishnu’s ten avataras, the minor avataras and the twenty-four forms.