Ambika on Jaina Art and Literature

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

Page 33

vati-kalpa bear testimony to this fact. The terrific form of Ambikā propitiated in a number of Tantric rites such as śāntika, paustika, stambhana, marana, etc. are also enunciated in some of the stutis and the stotras given in the appendices of the Bhairava-Padmavati-kapla. Apart from the propitiatory rites, the gruesome rites were also accepted in the Tantric mode of her worship.
The Sthānanga-sūtra (sūtra 273) (c. mid 4th century A.D.) refers to Pūrna-bhadra as Yaksendra (lord of Yaksas) who has Putra and Bahu-putrā as two of his four agra-mahişis. According to the Vyākhyā-prajñpti-sūtra (popularly known as Viyāha-pannatti and also as Bhagavati-sūtra), Bahu-putrikā (one of the four chief queens of both the Yakşendras--Mani-bhadra and Pūrņa-bhadra) had an independent caitya for her near Viśālā, probably Ujjain or Vaishāli.9 The Jaina āgamas are full of references to the worship of Yakşa and Yaksi, the most important of them being Mani-bhadra and Purna-bhadra Yakşas and Bahu-putrikā Yakşī. These references at once suggest that the Jainas were keeping well with the time in those ancient days by embracing popular worship. U.P. Shah has rightly observed in this connection that the origin of the Jaina Sarvāhna (or Sarvānubhūti, i.e. Vaisravana or Kubera) and Ambikā, and Buddhist Jambhala and Hārīti is rooted in the ancient worship of Mani-bhadra and Pūrņa-bhadra Yakşas, invoked as a patron of tradesmen, indicated also by Manibhadra's early statue from Pavāyā (anciently called Padmavati, Gwalior, M.P., c. 1st century B.C.), set up by a gostha (guild) and called 'Bhagavan' in the inscription, and one of his two chief consorts, Bahu-putrikā Yaksi. 10
The emergence of Ambikā with Sarvāhna or Sarvānubhūti as the earliest Yaksa-Yaksi or Sāsana-devatā pair to be associated with the Jinas is a form of Śakti worship as well. The seed of the cult of Sakti both in the Brahminical and Buddhist faiths seems to go back to the worship of the mother goddess in remote past. The Jaina Yakși Ambikā, riding a lion and sitting under a mango tree with a bunch of mangoes and child (putra) in her hands and her second son standing nearby, is a wonderful creation of the Jainas combining in her both the Mother and the Sakti aspects which the Jaina devotees hail from all walks of life. They had not gone beyond the desires of the material world and hence could not remain satisfied with the austerity and asceticism and as a consequence with the worship of the vita-rāga Jinas. As such they gradually developed for their convenience some formulae so as to induct such deities in Jaina
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