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Ancient Jaina Hymns
389
attendant of Pārsvanātha, the patron saint of the snake-king.
Yet it is difficult to understand how this Vairotyā, who is thus supposed to have lived and died as a human being during the life-time of Aryanandila, i.e., roughly in the former half of the second century after Vikrama, 194 and to have been a snake deity and Dharanendra's consort only since then, could be identical with Mallinātha's Śāsana-devi. For, as all the Śāsana-devas and -devis are believed to come into existence during the time of the 'tīrtha', i.e., the original community of the respective Tīrtharkara,195 Mallinatha's Śāsana-devi would have been in existence since more than 65,86,000 years, Mallinātha's nirvāņa being assumed to have taken place 65,84,000 years before the Vira-nirvāņa.
Did the great Hemacandra allow himself to be misled by the chance identity of the name of Mallinātha's Śāsana-devī with that of Āryanandila's 'Istadevată”, and this wrongly apportioned to the former goddess the epithet of 'Dharana-priyā', to which only her namesake was entitled ? This seems likely in view of the already mentioned absence of all snake attribues in Mallinātha's Śāsanadevi: for, a consort of Dharanendra would necessarily belong to the class of the ‘Nāgakumāras', and as such, be bound to wear the snake emblem,1% as Āryanandila's Vairotyā ostentatiously does (“nāgiņi nāgarūdhā nāga-karā nāga-bhūsiya-sarīrā, nāgehim siramālā nāgamuhā sā”, st. 3 of the pertinent stava ).
As the deity whom our poem eulogizes, is doubtlessly a snake-goddess, she would probably not be Mallinātha's Śāsanadevī, but may be identical with the Dharaṇa-priyā Vairotyā of Aryanandila's hymn. It remains to be seen whether she cannot be more clearly defined.
3. The Jaina Pantheon knows of a third goddess of the name of Vairotyā, viz., one of the 16 Vidyā-devīs'.197 The latter are common to Digambaras and Svetāmbaras. Like the sāsana-devas and devīs, they too are first mentioned, as a group, and described, with their emblems, in post-canonical works.198 They are often in
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