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The Cosmic Egg, according to Hindu mythology, with Vienu lying on Sepa naga with a lotus emerging from his navel and Brahma sitting on it. Also shown are Lakami, Garuda, etc.
Gouache on paper, 18th century, Rajasthan.
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Courtesy: Ravi Kumar, The Jain Cosmology.
flecting, it seems, on the nature of the lotus itself!
On one remarkable ceiling in the corridor in the eleventh-century temple Vimalavasahi, the sixteen-armed Nrsimha tears the belly of the demon Hiranyakasyapa with all the fury that is associated with the act. In a Jain temple, such depiction of violence is rare. Yet what renders this act a certain elegance and cosmic inevitability is the sixteen-petalled lotus flower in the centre of which both the demon and the god are engraved, more in an embrace than in a combat. Surrounding the lotus, on a rectangular panel, is the ancient myth of sägar manthan, "The Churning of the Ocean', in which the demons and gods struggle to obtain amṛta, 'the elixir of immortality'.
One can't say with certainty that one comprehends the meaning of these images and metaphors fully. One thing is certain, however: those wondrous hands that created these eternal images and exquisite lotuses, some as large as twenty-five feet in diameter, several hundreds years ago, as early as the eleventh century, must have known and experienced at some level the glory that resides in the treasure chest, hiranya kosa, of a 'thousand-petalled lotus'.
