The 24 murthis of Vishnu you must be familiar with

Perhaps the most popular sahasranama is the Vishnu Sahasranama which gives out thousand different names of Vishnu. Even within these thousand names, it is the set of twenty-four names that is most widely recited and considered the most important one. Every name of this deity [and most others also] has distinct meaning and dimension. Very few temples posses the right iconography to depict that distinct rupa. Amongst such temples, the ones built by the Hoysalas stand tallest. Every panel of a Hoysala temple narrates a unique story. One of the most fascinating set of sculptures in the Indian temple architecture is the twenty-four images of Vishnu found on the walls of most of the Vaishnava Hoysala temples.

These images usually have Vishnu standing on his feet with four arms of his holding shankha, chakra, gada and padma in different orders, in accordance with the Vaishnava rupamandana. The permutation of these four ayudhas with four hands of Vishnu is depicted brilliantly in as many sculptures of Vishnu in one of the most exquisitely built Hoysala temple at Hosaholalu. A few images of the same are reported here.(We couldn’t get all the 24 murthis, only 17 are available here) On the next page is the table showing the name of the rupa for different permutation of the four ayudhas in four hands.

1. Keshava

2. Narayana

3. Madhava

4. Govinda

5. Vishnu

6. Madhusudana

7. Trivikarma

8. Vamana

9. Sridhara

10. Padmanabha, Hrshikesha

11. Samkarshana

12. Vasudeva

13. Aniruddha

14. Purushottama

15. Achyuta, Narasimha, Adhokshaja

16. Janardhana

17. Shri Krshna