During the colonial era, Christian missionaries aiming to convert Hindus to Christianity wrote memoirs and books that were widely distributed in Europe, which Mitter, Pennington and other scholars call as fictionalized stereotypes, where "Murti" were claimed as the evidence of lack of spiritual heritage in primitive Hindus, of "idolatry and savage worship of stones" practices akin to Biblical demons, calling Murti as monstrous devils to eroticized bizarre beings carved in stone.