Elements of Buddhist Iconography c6.20

c6.20

15 *(page 10)*. In *Ṛg Veda*, I, 59, 1 and 2, Agni is "a pillar (*sthūṇa*) supporting the kindreds" (*janān*, viz. angels and men); in IV, 13, 5, "established as an angelic pillar (*skambha*) he rules-and-wards (*pāti*) the firmament" (*nāka*, that Middle Space, *antarikṣa*, in which all existence is extended); *ibid.*, X, 5, 6, "He is a pillar (*skambha*) of life at the parting of the ways"; *ibid.*, V, 29, 4, "Heaven and Earth he pillars-apart" (*vitaram viṣkabhāyat*). That axis of the Universe is also, as stated explicitly in *ibid.*, X, 89, 4, the axle-tree of the Solar Car, "by the axle of his wheeled car he indeed by his powers pillars-apart Heaven and Earth" (*akṣeṇeva cakriyā śacībhir viṣvak tastambha pṛthivīm uta dyām*). In *Atharva Veda*, X, 8, 2, the pillar (*skambha*) is "all that is hypostasized" (*sarvam ātmanvat*), and the entire hymn, X, 7, lauds the same pillar wherein all existence (*bhuvana*) is infixed (*arpitā*); this axis of the Universe (which is also the axle-tree of the Solar Car and the trunk of the Tree of Life), though single in its proper form (*svarūpa*, Dante's *forma universal*, Paradiso, XXXIII, "one simple Light, that in its depths encloses, as in a single volume, all that is scattered on the pages of the Universe)," is also the form of very different things (*viśvarūpa*). The Scholastic notion of exemplarism is implied, cf. Eckhart, I, 182, "Everything is pictured in His Providence," which corresponds again to the notion of the world-picture, "painted by the Self on the canvas of the Self," Śaṅkarācārya, *Svātmanirūpaṇa*, 95.