The Development of Hindu Iconography c12.46.2

c12.46.2

All these different symbols are originally derived from the so-called Nāga symbol just mentioned, in which D. R. Bhandarkar recognised the kaustubha maṇi, the jewel par excellence, which adorns the breast of Viṣṇu (kaustubhamani-bhūṣitoraskaḥ ; Bṛhatsaṃhitā, Ch. 57, v. 31) ; he saw the sign on the breast of the Viṣṇu figure sculptured in the verandah of the cave at Udayagiri, bearing the date 82 (Gupta era) as also on the breast of the Garuḍa which crowned the Besnagar column (A.S.I.A.R., 1913-14, p. 211). A. K. Coomaraswamy, on the other hand, would identify it as the śrīvatsa mark, one of the eight auspicious signs (aṣṭamaṅgalā) in Jain literature and art, which is also a Vaiṣṇava symbol (Ost-Asiatische Zeitschrift, 1927-28, pp. 183-4). Varāhamihira describes the image of Viṣṇu as śrīvatsāṅkitavakṣa and so Coomaraswamy's suggestion is not less likely. In any case, there is no doubt about the Vaiṣṇava character of the symbol and its variants in its present association and we have seen how one form of it appears on the Bhita seal of Saṅkaradatta. Now the symbol on the Viṣṇupāda temple seal described by Bloch as ‘ a staff consisting of seven dots ’ (Pl. I, Fig. 12) is nothing but the Indian variant of the peculiar club shown in the hands of Śiva on Maues' coin, the biscriptual copper seal of Śivarakṣita, and in one of the hands of the four-armed composite god on the nicolo seal wrongly attributed by Cunningham to Huvishka already described in Chapter IV.