The Development of Hindu Iconography c16.26

c16.26

Before I describe some of the early and late iconographic types of the Nāgas and the Nāginīs as represented in Indian art, I shall refer only to a few of the texts of the mediaeval period, which describe the Nāga or Nāginī types. This is necessary to show in what manner the nature of the latter was determined by the former. Hemādri quotes five couplets from Maya (evidently *Mayasaṃgraha* from which he takes his materials for the description of the Yakṣas), where the peculiarities of the figures of Takṣaka, Karkoṭaka, Padma, Mahāpadma, Śaṅkhapāla and Kulika Nāgas are described. In the last part of the extract are given the following common traits of the iconographic type: ‘the Nāgas have two tongues and arms, and seven hoods with jewels on them; they hold rosary of beads (*akṣasūtra*) in their hands and are endowed with curling tails; their wives and children bear either one or three hoods’.¹ The *Viṣṇudharmottara* (Bk. III, Ch. 65, verses 2-8) describes Ananta Nāga as ‘four-armed, endowed with many hoods with the beautiful earth goddess standing on the central hood; in the right hands of the god are to be placed a lotus and a pestle, while his left hands should hold a ploughshare and a conch-shell’. Mention here of the ‘sea of liquor’, ‘palm tree’ and other features in association with the divine Nāga leaves little doubt that Ananta in this context is no other than an incarnation of the Lord Viṣṇu, and is closely associated from the iconographic point of view with Saṃkarṣaṇa or Balarāma. The 17th century text of *Silparatna* characterises the iconography of the Nāgas in two couplets: these verses lay down that ‘the Nāgas are human in shape from the navel upwards, their lower part being serpentine in form; they have encircling hoods on their heads; the hoods may be one, three, five, seven or nine; they should have two tongues, and should hold a sword and a shield in their (two) hands’.¹