Bali is filled with statues, some are giant (more than 50 ft high) and some are small and placed at inconspicuous places. Bali consisting of a majority Hindu population naturally has statues of Hindu gods or mythological characters from Mahabharata and Ramayana. Bali’s Hinduism is a world away from that we find in India. I found the practice of Hindu religion as less dogmatic and more tolerant. In Bali, statues of Gods are placed at public places like roads and on the top of commercial establishments too, which we never see in India. Even the form of their Gods and Goddesses are different. In this post I have tried to identify some of the statues from my limited knowledge of our culture, please do correct if you think any of them are wrongly classified.

This is one of the grand (and easily the largest) statue I came across in Bali - located in Ubud district. Initially the driver of our car told this was a statue of Rama from ‘Ramayana’ but later when we visited a sculptor he identified it as that of Arjuna, which I concur too – given that the archer is standing on an elephant (Airavata) and has an arc made of serpents.
Date of visit: September 2010
Place: Bali, Indonesia
1 Comment
Paresh · 30 Oct ’10 at 4:22 pm
Superb photos Anoop.