Ambika on Jaina Art and Literature

Author(s): Maruti Nandan Prasad Tiwari
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

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the men and animals of the universe with food produced from her body.
Religion and art belong together by identities of origin, theme and inner experience. Religious worship in India is that activity which results from a recognition of dependence upon those powers, benevolent as well as malevolent, which are beyond man's control. The origin of deities lies in the fear of, and reverence for elements and natural phenomena, diseases, and happenings around men and affecting them as good or evil. In religion we always find two main streams going hand in hand and in constant state of interaction. They are the "great tradition" (sampradāya) and the little tradition (loka). This interaction is clearly seen in case of Jaina Yaksi Ambikā when we try to trace her origin. The popular worship of female principle as 'Mother', representing fertility cult,' was adopted by the Jainas in the form of an early Yaksi Bahu-putrikā (one having many children) who towards the close of sixth century A.D., was transformed into Yaksi Ambika. Thus the Jaina Ambikā is a clear cut example of the assimilation of popular belief of the Mother goddess in Jaina worship to formulate the form of one of the most favoured Yaksi which is specifically shown with two sons. Her popularity doubtlessly was due mainly to her symbols of fertility such as a pair of sons and the amralumbi (a bunch of mango fruits) and, as a consequence, people propitiated her for begetting children.
The general assumption is that the Jaina Ambikā, also called as Ambā, Kuşmandini, Bālā-devi, is borrowed from the Brahminical pantheon. Observes B.C. Bhattacharya: "She is by name and appearance a borrowed form of Durgā. She further has the name, as in this case, of Kūsmāndini. Kusmāndi is the name of Durgā. Küşmāndas were a hilly clan attached to Siva."3 And writes J.N. Banerjea : "Ambikā or Kūsmandini 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. Ambika in Jaina iconographic art rides a lion and holds in her four hands an āmra-lumbi, a noose, a child and an ankuša, and she is thus the Jaina opposite of Durgă, one of whose early appellations is Ambika; Küsmándini appears also to have been derived from an epithet of Drugā, which is Kūşmandi or Kuşmāndā. Sometimes she is shown accompanied by seven dancing female figures, and they may be
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