in the right hand and lotus on the other. Sometimes, the shankha of Vishnu is personified as Ayudhapurusha "weapon-man" in the sculpture and depicted as a man standing beside Vishnu or his avatars. This subordinate figure is called the Shankhapurusha who is depicted holding a shankha in both the hands. Temple pillars, walls, gopuras (towers), basements and elsewhere in the temple, sculpted depictions of the shankha and chakra – the emblems of Vishnu – are seen. The city of Puri also known as Shankha-kshetra is sometimes pictured as a shankha or conch in art with the Jagannath temple at its centre. Shaligrams are iconographic fossil stones particularly found in the Gandaki River in Nepal which are worshipped by Hindus as representative of Vishnu. The shaligrama – which has the marks of a shanka, chakra, gada and padma arranged in this particular order – is worshipped as Keshava. Twenty-four orders of the four symbols defined for Shaligrama are also followed in worship of images of Vishnu with different names. Out of these, besides Keshava the four names of images worshipped starting with Shankha on the upper hand, are: Madhusudanah, Damodara, Balarama and Vamana. In Hindu legend A Hindu legend in the Brahma Vaivarta Purana recalls the creation of conchs: Shiva flung a trident towards the asuras, burning them instantaneously. Their ashes flew in the sea creating conchs. Shankha is believed to be a brother of Lakshmi as both of them were born from the sea. A legend describes an asura named Shankhasura, who was killed by Vishnu's fish avatar, Matsya. In the Hindu epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata, the symbol of Shankha is widely adopted. In the Ramayana epic, Lakshmana, Bharata and Shatrughna are considered part-incarnations of Sheshanaga, Sudarshana Chakra and Shankha, respectively, while Rama, their eldest brother, is considered one of the ten Avatars of shri Vishnu. During the great Mahabharata war, Krishna, as the charioteer of the Pandava prince and a protagonist of the epic – Arjuna – resounds the Panchajanya to declare war. Panchajanya in Sanskrit means 'having control over the five classes of beings'. All five Pandava brothers are described having their own shankhas. Yudhishthira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva are described to possess shankhas named Ananta-Vijaya, Poundra-Khadga, Devadatta, Sughosha and Mani-pushpaka, respectively. Association with nāgas Because of the association of the shankha with water, nāgas are often named after the shankha. The list of Nāgas in