The Development of Hindu Iconography c19.s6.28

c19.s6.28

In the hierarchy of the Jaina deities, especially in its broader outlines, many of the subsidiary members of the pantheon were direct copies of the Brahmanical Hindu divinities. The Jaina texts like Ācāra Dinakara, Uttarādhyāyana Sūtra and Abhidhāna Cintāmaṇi classify the secondary Jaina deities under four heads,—Jyotiṣī, Vimānavāsī, Bhavanapati and Vyantara, and long lists of similar and other divinities are also found there. But the deities whose images (beside those of the Jinas) are usually found in Jaina iconographic art comprise the Navagrahas, the Dikpālas, the Yakṣa and Yakṣiṇī attendants of the twenty-four Tīrthamkaras, usually described as their Upāsakas and Śāsanadevatās. Besides these there are the sixteen Śruta- or Vidyā-devīs (the presiding deity of which is Sarasvatī), the Aṣṭamātṛkās, the Bhairavas, the sixty-four Yoginīs, Śrī or Lakṣmī, Gaṇeśa, Kṣetrapāla and others. The names and iconographic features of most of them are similar to those of their Brahmanical counterparts, though occasional reorientation in the mode of their representation in early