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A Unique Door-Lintel from Khajuraho
MARUTI NANDAN PRASAD TIWARI
Khajuraho, in Chhatarpur District of Madhya Pradesh, has yielded profuse Jaina vestiges of iconographic and art-historical importance, spread over the tenth to the twelfth century A.D. The Jaina antiques of Khajuraho are the creation exclusively of the Digambara sect. In the present paper we propose to make a note on the figures carved on an unpublished door-lintel from Khajuraho, now on display at the openair Archaeological Museum, previously known as the Jardin Museum, at Khajuraho (Acc. No. 1467). The door-lintel probably belongs to the eleventh century A.D. It is a singular door-lintel from Khajuraho in the sense that it incarnates in inanimate stone the three most popular Jaina Yaksis, namely, Cakresvari, Ambika and Padmavati together. Perhaps it is relevant to mention here that the Rūpamandana invokes Cakresvari, Ambika, Padmavati and Siddhayika, respectively the Yaksis of Rsabhanatha, Neminatha, Parsvanatha and Mahavira, as the four popular-most Yaksis of Jaina pantheon.2
The beautifully designed long rectangular slab with the main figures of the Yaksis being inset in high relief contains the figures of the navagrahas also, carved in a row from left to right. The left and right extremities of the slab (from the onlookers viewpoint) are occupied by the figures respectively of Ambika and Padmavati, while in the centre is carved Cakresvari. These Yaksi figures possessing four arms are seated in lalitāsana with right leg dangling down and the left one being folded. Each of the Yaksis is bedecked in dhoti, necklaces, stanahara, armlets, braceletes, anklets and girdle. Cakresvari wears a kirita-mukuta, while Padmavati and Ambika wear respectively a karanda-mukuța and an embellished coiffure.
Cakresvari or Apraticakra (as some sources call her), the Yaksi of the first Jina Rsabhanatha, rides a garuda (represented in human form and supporting the seat of the Yaksi) and bears in her surviving hands the
1 All other door-lintels of the Jaina temples at Khajuraho contain in general the
figures of Cakresvari, Ambika, Laksmi, Sarasvati, and in one instance
Siddhayika, the Yaksi of Mahavira, also. ? Rupamandana, 6.25-26.
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