The Development of Hindu Iconography c19.s2.1.1

c19.s2.1.1

The Hindu concept about the Dikpālas or Lokapālas, the guardians of the quarters or the worlds, is very old. In the well-developed Purāṇic mythology the names of the deities, and those of the major and subsidiary quarters over which they had their respective jurisdiction, are the following:—Indra is the lord of the east, Yama of the south, Varuṇa of the west and Kubera of the north; Agni, Nirṛti, Vāyu and Īśāna are the respective guardians of the south-east, south-west, north-west and north-east. We do not, however, find this stereotyping in far earlier texts, where there is a great variety in the enumeration of the protectors of the various quarters or the worlds. Early Buddhist and Jaina texts also differ from one another in their characterisation of this group of divinities. Sūrya, Candra, Vāyu, Agni, Yama, Varuṇa, Indra and Kubera, the eight great Devas of the early epic literature, are grouped in some later texts as the guardians of the four chief and four minor quarters, or simply as ‘Lokapālas’. Thus, Manu tells us that ‘a king embodies in his self all the eight Lokapālas, Soma (Candra), Agni, Arka (Sūrya), Anila (Vāyu), Indra, Vittapati (Kubera), Āpapati (Varuṇa) and Yama’.¹ The first list, which is later in point of date, differs from the second one in substituting Nirṛti and Īśāna for Sūrya and Candra in the latter.