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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
In confirmation of this interpretation, I may point to four mutilated statues now in the Museum at Mathura, lithographed by Sir A. Cunningham in the Arch. Suro. Reports, vol. XX, plate iv, 2-5. Two of them represent seated females. "Each of them has," as Sir A. Cunningham says, op. cit., p. 36, "a small child lying in a dish on her lap. The left hand supports the dish, but the right is raised up to the shoulder. Both females appear to be naked." The other two figures are males with the heads of animals. “Both," to use Sir A. Cunningham's words, "are represented in the same action. The larger figure carries a pair of children, male and female, in his left hand, each being grasped by one arm at full stretch. The right hand of the figure is raised to the shoulder in the same position as the right hands of the females. On each shoulder a small child is seated facing the head of the figure. The smaller figure is exactly the same as the larger one, excepting that it carries only one child by its outstretched arm." Sir A. Cunningham then goes on to say that he has been unable to find a clue to these curious or-headed' figures, and that he abandoned his first idea that they might be Yaksbas and Yakshiņis of gigantic size preparing to eat the children, because the small figures, seated on the shoulders of the two males, seemed to point to a more friendly connection between the two parties.
With respect to Sir A. Cunningham's description I must state that I differ from him in one important particular. In my opinion the two males are not ox-headed,' but
goat-headed; for, between the much mutilated bodies of the children and the likewise somewhat disfigured heads, pendent goats' ears are recognisable, especially in the smaller figure. This granted, it is evident that both males are representations of Naigamesha. With this identification the other details admit of explanation. The motionless infants, represented in connection with the males, are the two embryos, which Naigamesha had to exchange. If the artist represented the larger Naigamesha with two children on his shoulders and two in his hands, and the smaller one with two on his shoulders and one in his band, he probably meant to indicate two different steps in the transaction, viz., that the deity first took the children out of their mother's bodies and cleansed them of all impurity,' as the Kalpasútra says, and later conveyed them to their new destination on his shoulders. The two female figures are, of course, No. 2 Trišala and No. 3 Devananda, who are represented, the former with a male child on her lap and the other with a female one, in order to show what each received. And it must be noted that the higher rank of Trišalâ seems to be indicated by the more costly necklace which she wears. The story, which the sculptures tell according to this explanation, may have differed in one detail from that of the Kalpasútra, where Nega mesi is said to have taken Mahâvîra in his joined palms, not on his shoulder. But it is also possible that the change is an invention of the sculptor, who wished to represent the deity as carrying the two infants, for both of which there would not have been any room in his hands.
If one compares these figures with our slab, the very close resemblance of the position of the infant, and of the attitude of the female holding it, is at once apparent. And this point, taken together with the unmistakable figure of Naigamesha-Nemeso, irresistibly leads to tbe conclusion that the legend referred to must be the same in both sculptures.
The other two relievos on plate II, B and C, are found on a fragment of the dourstep
