The Development of Hindu Iconography c19.s4.4

c19.s4.4

Rao cites three different accounts about the origin of Adhikāranandin from Śiva-mahāpurāṇa, Liṅgapurāṇa and another unnamed text (op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 455-58). No reference is to be found there to his peculiar ungainly appearance, and he is primarily described as a human being having some iconographic traits of Śiva. The Viṣṇudharmottara (Bk. III, Ch. 73, vv. 15-7) describes Nandin as three-eyed, four-armed, wearing a tiger-skin garment, holding a triśūla and a bhindipāla (a kind of javelin) in two of his hands, one of the (front) hands being placed on his head, the other being in the tarjanīmudrā. Another unnamed south-Indian text quoted by Rao characterises him as holding a battle-axe and an antelope (in his back hands), (his front hands) being in the añjalimudrā in the act of bowing to Lord Śiva, his body being besmeared with ashes (this is the Pāśupata practice), (his head) being brightened by crescent moon, Gaṅgā and snail-shell-like jaṭās (Vibhrāṇaṃ paraśum mṛgaṃ karatale Īśapraṇāmāñjaliṃ bhasmoddhūlitapāṇḍuraṃ śasikalā-Gaṅgākaparddojvalam). The male figure usually placed into the entrance-door of many Śiva temples of Southern India corresponds to the second description, and thus, as has been observed by Rao, resembles to some extent Śiva in his Candraśekharamūrti aspect; the difference lies in this that the front hands of the former are folded in obeisance, while those of the latter are in the varada and the abhaya poses. Rao rightly observes that ‘the figure of Adhikāranandin is sometimes mistaken by the less informed persons for that of Śiva’ (ibid., p. 455). But Nandin’s fully theriomorphic (bull) form was never discarded by the devout Śaivas, for every Śaiva shrine in India must have the figure of a bull squatting on a raised pedestal facing the entrance-door of the shrine, inside the main sanctum of which is almost invariably placed the divine emblem, the Śivaliṅga. This explains the Matsyapurāṇa description of Nandin as devavīkṣaṇatatparaḥ, i.e., ‘engaged in looking at the Deva (Śiva)’.