The Development of Hindu Iconography c12.41

Language: English

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The unique seals of the late Gupta and the early mediæval period that were discovered at Nalanda contain some figures of Brahmanical deities and their emblems, interesting both from the artistic and the iconographic point of view. It will be possible to notice at some length only some of them in this connection. Nalanda was principally associated with Buddhism, and it is interesting to find so many Brahmanical Hindu deities and their emblems on these seals. But such devices appear mostly on the sealings of royal personages, private officials and village organisations (grāma or grāmika janapada), the Mahāvihāra seals mostly bearing Buddhist emblems. It proves that the rulers of the land as well as a good many of their subjects living around the famous Buddhist monastery and seat of learning were followers of the Brahmanical creeds. Sometimes seals with Brahmanical deities on them were tested on lumps of clay bearing impressions of monastic seals, Hindu and Buddhist devices thus appearing side by side. A four-armed goddess seated on a lotus seat on the back of a lion, described in the seal legend as Śrīmad-Deveśvarī is shown on a sealing (S.I., 305) which bears on another side the name and emblems of the Nalanda monastery. She is most probably Durgā Siṃhavāhinī; she appears thus on another monastic sealing (S. 9, 75), three of her hands holding a mace (gadā), a sword (khaḍga) and a lotus stalk, the animal below her looking like a buffalo.

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Buffalo is the usual mount of Yama, the god of death, as well as that of Vārāhī, one of the Sapta- Mātṛkās, but here the goddess does not look like her. Another buffalo-riding four-armed Devī appears on a sealing (S.I., 547) with a sword and a wheel (cakra) in her upper right and left hands, and a trident (triśūla) in her lower right, the object in the lower left being indistinct. She also does not look like Vārāhī, and the emblems held by her hands are indicative of cult amalgam. A fragmentary seal (S.I., 915) has a six-armed goddess riding on a bull, and she may stand for Māheśwarī, a śakti of Śiva and one of the Mātṛkās, the number of hands being unusual. A round burnt red clay sealing (S. 9, R. 92) contains a seated goddess with a noose (pāśa), a trident, a lotus bud and a water-vessel (kamaṇḍalu) respectively in her four hands from the lower right onwards; the two-line legend is Brāhmaṇī-grāmajanapadasya (the legend and at least two of her attributes may partially associate her with Brahmāṇī, another of the Mātṛkās). An eight-armed goddess seated on a lion, presumably the goddess Durgā, appears on an ‘elongated oval’ sealing of a grāmajanapada (S. 9, R. 19); a wheel, a bow and a trident can be recognised among her emblems. Devices on two seals (S. 9, R. 55 and S. 9, R. 144) with the respective legends Kālī-grāmakīya-janapada and Śrī Nālandā-pratibaddha-Bhūtikā-(grāma......)...janapadasya are very interesting from the iconographic point of view.

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They appear to be four-armed goddesses riding on alligators or iguanas; the association of these animals (godhā) has already been noticed by me in some ring-stones of the Maurya period. The device on a seal (S. 9, R. IA.) shows the eight-armed goddess Durgā Simhavāhinī with a sword, a lotus, a bell (ghaṇṭā), a snake (?), a noose, etc., in her hands, two of them being shown in the ‘assurance’ (abhaya) and boon-conferring (varada) poses. But the most interesting device appears on a seal (S. 9, R. IA) in the form of a skeleton goddess holding in four hands a skull cup (kapāla), a sword (?), a scythe (kartṛ) and a trident from the lower right onwards; she is seated facing right on a dead body (pretāsana), this feature being unnoticed by Hirananda Sastri. He identifies her as Mahākālī, but her sunken belly (possibly with a scorpion mark on it not distinguishable from the reproduction), fleshless and haggard look (*nirmāmṣā*), her sitting posture and attributes leave little doubt that she stands for Cāmuṇḍā, one of the most terrific forms of the goddess Durgā (Pl. X, Fig. 11). The aforesaid devices fully prove that Nalanda and its environs were flourishing seats of Śakti worship in the late Gupta and early mediæval periods, when many of the iconographic varieties of the goddess served as objects of worship to the local people.