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The Development of Hindu Iconography c19.s5: Āyudhapuruṣas

The Development of Hindu Iconography c19.s5

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Āyudhapuruṣas

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The phenomenal development of the practice of making images and worshipping them is interestingly indicated by the fact that even the attributes or weapons meant to be placed in the hands of the deities were personified and represented anthropomorphically. Such representations came to be designated generally as the Āyudhapuruṣas, and it is worthy of note that this feature was mostly associated with the icons of Viṣṇu. Cakra and gadā in human form are found as early as the Gupta period; śaṅkha and rarely padma are also anthropomorphised in the Viṣṇuite reliefs of the early and late mediaeval periods of Eastern and Northern India. Various other emblems, such as vajra, śakti, daṇḍa, khaḍga, pāśa, aṅkuśa, triśūla, etc., are also personified in late iconographic texts, but they are seldom shown in human form. The earliest representation of an Āyudhapuruṣa, however, seems to go back to the Indo-Scythic period. Vajra appears on some copper coins of Maues as a man behind whom is carved a double-pronged thunderbolt, just in front of Zeus-Indra whose right hand is placed over his head. Gardner describes this device as, ‘Zeus laureate, seated to left, on throne; holds in left hand sceptre; right extended towards small winged female figure, who seems to be an embodiment of the thunderbolt’ (B.M.C., p. 70, Pl. XVI. 9). In the introduction to his Catalogue (p. vii), the same author emphasises on this ‘impersonation of the thunderbolt’.

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But it is a fact that such a personification of vajra has not been found in later reliefs. Of the different Vaiṣṇava emblems usually represented in art, some are depicted as male and others as female, their gender being determined by that of the respective word denoting them. Thus, the word gadā being in feminine gender, its personified form is shown as a beautiful woman, śaṅkha being masculine, it is represented as a male figure. Cakra and padma are in the neuter gender, and the texts enjoin that they should be shown as eunuchs, but for all practical purposes they appear as male figures in late Gupta and mediaeval art. The texts also emphasise that weapons like śakti, aṅkuśa, pāśa, vajra, etc., should be personified on the basis of the above criterion; but there is hardly any means of testing this textual injunction as they are seldom represented in human form. Rao recognised in some of the accessory figures, shown in the Śeṣaśayana relief at Deogarh, the Āyudhapuruṣas, Dhanuṣ, Cakra, Śaṅkha, Gadā and Khaḍga; the first and the fourth stand by the side of the central figure, the last three standing below in fighting attitude in front of the demons Madhu and Kaiṭabha. The character of some of the accessory figures as Āyudhapuruṣas standing by the composite deity is usually determined by the showing of their real forms (a wheel, a mace, a conch-shell, etc.) either behind or on the head of the personifications;

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particular weapons or attributes are also sometimes placed in their hands. The mere presence of such emblems in the hands of the attendants of Vāsudeva Viṣṇu, however, would not always mean that they are Āyudhapuruṣas. Thus, in the Madhyama Bhogāsanamūrti of Viṣṇu in the Kailāsanāthasvāmin temple at Conjeevaram (Rao, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 105, Pl. XXVI), the god does not hold any of the attributes in his four hands; but a conch-shell and a discus are carried by two small attendants who also hold a yak-tail in their other hands. These two figures have been wrongly described by Rao as Āyudhapuruṣas; but as they are female figures, and as Cakra- and Śaṅkha-puruṣas are never shown thus, they are really the female companions of the god carrying for him two of his principal attributes. The Viṣṇu-cakra, found at Sharishadaha (Twenty-four Perganas, Bengal) and now in the collection of the Asutosh Museum, Calcutta University, is a unique sculpture carved on both sides with the same device. It depicts a four-armed figure dancing on the shoulders of Garuḍa in the centre of a finely carved wheel; his front hands are beating time over his head (or shown in one form of obeisance, namaskāra), the back hands holding a cakra and a gadā. Garuḍa and these two emblems prove that the figure inside the wheel is no other than the Cakrapuruṣa.

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who is partly endowed with the character of Viṣṇu (cf. human representations of Adhikāranandin already discussed). This is evidently Sudarśana, the *cakra* par *excellence* of Viṣṇu (Pl. XXVI, Fig. 4). Sudarśana-cakra is described in the *Silparatna* and other texts either as an eight- or sixteen-armed Viṣṇu placed inside a Ṣaṭkoṇacakra (two interlacing equilateral triangles in the midst of a rayed disc.) The Bengal sculpture is a new variety of Sudarśana, and was either set up as a main image in a subsidiary shrine in a Vaiṣṇava temple, or it served as the capital piece of a column, like the Janiform Garuḍa on the top of a Garuḍadhvaja noticed above. The Viṣṇudharmottara description of Cakrapuruṣa is different. It appears there as ‘a male figure with round eyes and a drooping belly; it is to carry a *cauri*, and is to be adorned with various ornaments. It is also to be carved in such a manner as to indicate that it is showing a desire to gaze upon Viṣṇu; the left hand of the god should be made to rest upon the head of Cakrapuruṣa’ (Bk. III, Ch. 85, vv. 13-4).

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