The Development of Hindu Iconography c10.78

c10.78

pillar, square below and octagonal above.¹ The latter bears among other figures the figure of Gaja-Lakṣmī flanked by a pilaster emerging from a pot resting on the head of a Yakṣa and crowned by a cock; the stone cock must have originally served as the capital of a column, perhaps the very column whose carved shaft was found some distance from it, as it still bears a tenon projecting from its bottom. The cock as well as the peacock is the special emblem of Kārttikeya and is especially associated with various aspects of the deity; thus on the coins of the Kushan emperor Huvishka, Mahāsena and Skanda, two of the different aspects of the same god, are shown holding in their hands standards surmounted by a bird which is presumably a cock or a peacock.² Skanda Kārttikeya is described in the texts as Barhiketu (Skandaḥ Kumārarūpaḥ śaktidharo barhiketuśca, Bṛhatsaṃhitā ch. 57), and so there can be no doubt that these Lala Bhagat finds are connected with the cult of Kārttikeya whose shrine existed somewhere near their provenance in the 2nd century A.D. On one class of the Yaudheya coins, Skanda appears accompanied by a peacock, and on the peacock type coins of Kumāragupta I, he rides on the bird (cf. Pl. IX, fig. 8). Some mediæval sculptures of this god are known, where a cock is placed in his hand. The Viṣṇudharmottara enjoins that kukkuṭa and ghaṇṭā should be placed in his right hand, and vaijayanti patākā and śakti in his left. The Mahābhārata associates cock with him (Tvaṃ krīḍase ṣaṇmukha kukkuṭena yatheṣṭa nānāvidha kāmarūpī, III. 231, 16). One other interesting fact worth noticing about the pillar fragment is that the prominence given to the figure of Sūrya among the carvings on its side supports the suggestion of some writers that Kārttikeya had some solar connection; Skanda is sometimes regarded as one of the attendant divinities of the Sun god in some iconographic texts where he is both named as Daṇḍa and Skanda (cf. T. A. G. Rao, *op. cit.*, Vol. I, Part II, pp. 303-04, where he quotes from *Viśvakarmā-śilpa* and *Bhaviṣyapurāṇa*).¹