The Development of Hindu Iconography c19.s6.30

c19.s6.30

and mediaeval Jaina art is also met with. The very interesting image-type of Hariṇegamesi or Naigameṣa, a general of Devarāja Indra according to Jaina tradition, distinctly reminds us either of the goat-headed Dakṣa-Prajāpati, or the Chāgavaktra (‘goat-faced’) companion of Skanda-Kārttikeya of the Hindu mythology, and one of the various names of Kārttikeya is Naigameya according to early and late lexicons. The Brahmanical Hindu origin of many of the Upāsakas and Śāsanadevatās of the Jinas can be easily demonstrated. Thus Gomukha, the Yakṣa or Upāsaka of Ṛṣabhanātha, the first Tīrthaṃkara, must have been derived from Śiva, as his bull mount, and such of his attributes as battle-axe, noose, etc., prove; his bull face is reminiscent of a mode of representing Nandī, really Śiva himself in his hybrid theriomorphic form. The name and iconography of Yakṣa Brahmā, the Upāsaka of the tenth Jina Śitalanātha, show that he was a Jaina adaptation of Brahmā-Prajāpati of the Hindu triad; he has four faces and a lotus seat, and holds such attributes in his hands as a rosary, a citrus, a noose, a club, etc. Some of the attributes, it is true, are not those of the Hindu Brahmā, yet the name, the number of faces, the lotus seat and the rosary are significant. Similarly, Īśvara and Ṣaṇmukha Yakṣas, the respective Upāsakas of Śreyāṃśanātha and Vimalanātha, the eleventh and thirteenth Jinas, can be definitely associated with Śiva and Subrahmaṇya (Kārttikeya) on the basis of their names, mounts, emblems and other specialities. But such association in the case of some other members of the Jaina pantheon is not sufficiently clear, though their names are taken from Brahmanical Hindu mythology. The iconography of Yakṣas, Kumāra, Garuḍa, Kubera and Varuṇa, the respective Upāsakas of Vāsupujya, Śāntinātha, Mallinātha and Munisubrata, the twelfth, sixteenth, nineteenth and twentieth in the list of twenty-four Tīrthaṃkaras, will prove this. But even in such cases the extant images of these deities show partial similarity with their Brahmanical counterparts. As regards many of the Śāsanadevatās, their names alone may not always emphasise their Brahmanical association, though in some cases the names, emblems and mounts of them indicate this to a great extent. Ambikā or Kuṣmāṇḍinī, the Śāsanadevatā of Neminātha (the twenty-second Jina) and consort of Gomedha, comes under the latter group, and her iconographic features leave little doubt that she is a Jaina adaptation of the Hindu goddess of the same name. But the Jainas have a mythology of their own about this goddess, which has very little in common with the stories associated with her Hindu original. Ambikā in Jaina iconographic art rides a lion and holds in her four hands a bunch of mangoes, a noose, a child and an elephant goad, and she is thus the Jaina opposite of Durgā, one of whose early appellations is Ambikā; Kuṣmāṇḍinī, another name of the Jaina goddess, appears also to have been derived from an epithet of Durgā, which is Kuṣmāṇḍī or Kuṣmāṇḍa. Sometimes she is shown accompanied by seven dancing female figures, and they may be the Jaina adaptations of the Saptamātṛkās in this context. Padmāvatī, the Śāsanadevatā of the twenty-third Jina Pārśvanātha, is like him associated with snakes, and there is little doubt that her Hindu counterpart is the folk-goddess Manasā, one of whose names is also Padmāvatī or Padmā.