The boar of  Kantara has much significance in our mythology

Panjurli chooses to be the feared wild boar, not its despised domestic form, drawing attention to the tension between forest and field, nature and culture

The domesticated pig descended from the wild boar. The wild boar is a forager, the domesticated pig is a scavenger. Symbolically, they are a reminder of wild nature and cultivated culture.

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The pig was amongst the earliest animals to be domesticated across the world, and was a great source of protein and fat. Warriors and hunters preferred decorating their masks and crowns with the tusks of wild boar. However, as they settled down as farmers and herders, pigs got associated with scavenging, and uncleanliness. As a result, many communities prohibited the eating of pigs. This pork taboo is strictly observed in Jewish and Islamic communities.

In the Chinese world, however, the pig continues to be the symbol of abundance and joy, present in every feast. When the Portuguese came to India they mainstreamed the consumption of pork, and popularised in Goa a sanitation system where pigs consume human excrement in toilets. An efficient, effective, organic system of sewage management that evokes disgust in other parts of India, where domesticated pigs are connected with communities associated with cleaning and scavenger work. Hunting the wild pig however remains an act of valour in warrior communities. And in Tantrik traditions, the sow-goddess, Varahi, continues to be a feared symbol of great fertility and power.

Conversations about pigs and boars have resurfaced in recent times. This is due to the discovery, in Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh, of a massive Varaha statue dating back to the 5th century. Vishnu as the wild boar is depicted carrying the earth goddess, Bhoodevi, on his snout. This was carved probably on orders of local Kalachuri kings. A similar artwork has been found nearby in the Udaygiri caves of Madhya Pradesh, carved on orders of Gupta kings. These images express royal power. The wild boar was the king who saved the earth from foreign rulers such as Sakas, Pahlavas, and Kushans. This is when, for the first time, the  Dharma-shastra literature was rewritten with a theistic Puranic overtone, and presented through the mouth of Vishnu-Varaha.

Dharma-shastra were codes of worldly duties first composed some 2,300 years ago to counter the rising popularity of monastic Buddhism. These texts were Vedic, with no references of Puranic gods such as Shiva and Vishnu. Earliest texts describe Aryavarta as extending between the Himalayas and Vindhyas; but the later ones describe Aryavarta as extending to the oceans, indicating a spread of Vedic ideas to South India.

In  Manusmriti, dated to 200 CE, we are told Brahma encourages the transmission of  dharma knowledge through his  rishi-like sons. But, in the  Vishnu Dharma-shastra, dated to 800 CE, the code is presented by Vishnu, as Varaha, to the earth-goddess, who is seated on his snout, and worried about chaos and anarchy in the world, resulting from the rise of monastic orders and the arrival of foreign kings. The prominence given to the image of a wild boar indicates the shift of old fire-based Hinduism to the new image-based Hinduism that absorbed local deities to make Vedic ideas more appealing to their new royal patrons.