The Development of Hindu Iconography c19.s6.23.2

c19.s6.23.2

‘But with the Mahāyāna schools, whilst these gods were received, they were made to fit into an elaborate system of nomenclature and myth by which each was assigned a place in the illimitable aeons of their cosmogony.’ Then he comments on the transference of the attributes of Indra or Śakra to Vajrapāṇi, of those of Brahmā to Mañjuśrī, of those of Viṣṇu to Avalokiteśvara, of the attributes of Śiva to Virūpākṣa, one of the four Mahārājas or Lokapālas in the Mahāyāna pantheon.¹ A comparative study of many of the Brahmanical Hindu icons and the corresponding groups of Mahāyāna or Vajrayāna Buddhist images will enable us to throw more light on this subject. Numerous varieties of the Dhyāni-Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara (Padmapāṇi) have been described in the Sādhanamālā. Their iconographic traits enumerated in these texts, and some of their names mentioned in them, easily help us to find their counterparts or rather prototypes in the Hindu pantheon. The general form of Padmapāṇi-Avalokiteśvara appears to have been derived from Viṣṇu, but there is no doubt that such aspects of the Bodhisattva as Siṃhanāda, Nīlakaṇṭha, Halāhala, Padmanartteśvara, etc. were mere adaptations of Śiva. The sādhanas describe Siṃhanāda as nirbhūṣaṇa (‘without any ornaments’), wearing a jaṭāmukuṭa and a tiger-skin, having three eyes and a trident entwined by a white snake (sitaphaniveṣṭitaṃ triśūlam) by his side.