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Dr. Charlotte Krause: Her Life & Literature
central figure of Jaina Tantra-Śāstra, and, as such, subject to the moods and whims of the 'ärädhaka', who considers it as his privilege to invest his 'Śakti' with whatever attributes his desire may drive at, not hesitating to address her as Lakṣmi, Ambikā, Tripurasundari, Kālī, Cakreśvarī, Sarasvati, or even Kundalini.2 Besides, 'Padmavati' may in fact originally have been a 'Vidyādevi', i.e., one of the original Vidyadhara-vidyās.
On what basis the Prabhavaka-carita (V, st. 11) mentions Vairotya as the 'Śāsana-devatā' in Pārsvanatha's temple, is not clear. The poet may have done so, thinking of her as one of the consorts of Dharaṇa, the Śāsanadeva, or he may have used the word ‘Śāsanadevata' not in the technical sense of 'divine attendant on a particular Jina', but in a more general sense of 'divine devotee'.
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Anyhow, the goddess which the poet of our present 'Virastuti' invokes under the name of Vairotya, is most decidedly the divinity whom later Svetambara literature would define as the 13th "Vidyadevi'. Her martial qualities, suggested in her representations and descriptions by the sword and shield in two of her hands, are cleraly expressed in the first two lines, while her character as a snake goddess is unambiguously represented by the writhing snakes with which our poet describes her as tying her matted locks.
The manuscript in which this stuti is handed down, belongs to Muni Śrī Nyāyasāgarajī ( disciple of Panyasa Śrī Candrasāgara Gani ), with whose permission the stuti is published. It is a single leaf, containing 5 stutis in Samskṛta and Gujarati, without a colophon. Paper and ink are ordinary. The writing is in 17 lines of rather modern Devanagari. The manuscript appears to be at the utmost 100 years old. Our stuti is the first text, its end being marked by the legend “इति श्री वीरस्तुतिः ।। १ ।। ". The wording is very faulty, necessitating various emendations, as the apparatus shows. To the best of my knowledge, the stuti has not been published before.
7. The Mahavira-Stuti
This poem belongs to the same category of hymns as the
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