back of the Earth Goddess who has temporarily assumed a half-mare/half-woman form.All of these interpretations are problematic in one way or another.By moving beyond a textual explanation for the identity and popularity of a visual form, Greaves considers how the image may have functioned within the structural contexts and broader visual programs of the monuments and landscapes in which it was encountered and viewed.With her study, "Visual Story-Telling in Text and Image: The Nāga as Inhabitant of the Ocean and the Netherworld", Sanne Dokter-Mersch address the intersections of narrative and image.As in the study of Greaves, Dokter-Mersch also works to explain the features of an iconographic form.But in this case, the image itself it not obscure; rather, it depicts one of the most widely known moments from early Vaiṣṇava mythology.From the Kuṣāṇa period onwards, stone images of Viṣṇu in his boar manifestation (varāha) appear across India.Most elements in these material representations of the myth can be explained from an iconographic or textual point of view.One ubiquitous element of the images, however, cannot be explained by recourse to the textual sources that recount the manifestation of the boar avatāra: namely, the presence of one or two nāgas, or mythical serpents, coiling under Viṣṇu's foot.Reading text and image together, Dokter-Mersch argues that the artists' imaginings of the nāgas expresses a cosmological vision that, while also present in the literary narratives, takes on an innovative form in sculpture.Both Greaves and Dokter-Mersch take as their respective foci the material and visual expression of narratives.For Greaves, the connection between text and image is not straightforward, and her analysis points to spaces of material production and uses of images without a clear literary parallel.For Dokter-Mersch, the early Indic literary and visual sources are rich sources for representations of the varāha myth.But popularity does not equate to uniformity.Even within the parameters of a well-known narrative, authors and artisans found space for innovative modes of expression.This question about the possibility of innovation within established cultural parameters is addressed in an engaging way in the contribution of Peter Bisschop, "Vyoman: The Sky is the Limit.On the Bhaviṣyapurāṇa's Reworking of the Liṅgodbhava Myth."While the Liṅgodbhava myth is well known and tells of the origins of Śiva's worship in material form, specifically the liṅga that serves as his emblem, Bisschop draws attention to a remarkable adaptation of this myth in the context of Sūrya worship recorded in the Bhaviṣyapurāṇa.The Bhaviṣyapurāṇa authors revised the Liṅgodbhava myth told in chapter 3 of the Śivadharmaśāstra and turned it into a myth about the manifestation and worship of Sūrya's vyoman, a mysterious object presented as the supreme form of the Sun god.While the Liṅgodbhava narrative describes the origins of a 1