India, 1866, by Samuel Bourne

The Englishman Samuel Bourne became famous photographing India during the 1860s. The work presented here is a group of 15th century Jainist sculptures carved in to the cliffs of the Urwali gorge (called The Happy Valley by Bourne). The central figure of the image is a Tirthanker, one of twenty-four perfect human beings worshipped by practioners of Jainism, a religion/philosophy similar to Hinduism, with the main difference being that Jainists worship Tirthankers instead of a creator like God.