________________
१८४
अनुसन्धान-७१
the real/original one, figures on the Mauryan punch-marked coins and, in larger and ornate version, on a few Jaina āyagāpattas of the Mathurā-Śaka period. Its more ancient depiction figures in the early Hellenic context on the shields, at first as triskeles and next tetraskeles, as also on the coins of Lisia, a Persian satrapy of B.C. the fifth century. The medieval Sanskrit lexicographers plausibly had preserved the memory of the original shape of the nandyāvarta; for they liken it (apparently keeping in view its four curved arms) to the tentacles of an octopus, the legs of a spider, the spiral petals of the 'tagara' (Tabernaemontana coronaria) flower, et cetera. That helps visualizing the correct shape of this motif and identifying it.
While the true nandyāvarta had disappeared in depiction long ago, perhaps even a little before the dawn of the Gupta period, what later, in the tradition, was called/recognized as ‘nandyāvarta' (=akşaya-svastika) instead, as an ornamental and an auspicious motif, is first met in Karnāta, in two instances in Cave II in Bādāmi (soon after AD. 609) and in a ceiling in the Jambūlinga temple (AD. 696) in the same town.'' Quite a few early examples of its use in jāla-designs are encountered in the structural temples, for example a loose piece from a temple in Sārnāth (c. 5th cent. AD., plate 10), on the wall of the Mallikārjuna temple in Mahākūta (c. latter half of the 7th cent.) (plate 11), the Durga temple in Aihoļe (c. end of the 7th cent. AD., plate 13), and in the Kudalā Sangarneśvara temple (c. 3rd quarter of the 7th cent. AD., plate 14). It is also noticeable as blind grille in the salilāntara-recesses of the Padmabrahmā temple at Alampur (c. 2nd quarter of the 8th cent. AD., plate 12). In the medieval period, it is met in Tamilnadu in the later part of the last phase of the Colanādu style, particularly in the stone
