Jain Journal 2006 07

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 17

JAIN JOURNAL : VOL-XLI, NO. 1 JULY 2006
It is also a curious concidence which speaks well for mutual influence, that the elephant usually a white one which is shown to enter the womb of Māyā in Buddhist art is also the first of the auspicious dreams that Devānandā and Trišalā are said to have seen on the eve of Mahāvīr's advent. The Kalpasūtra of Bhadrabāhu elaborately describes the theriomorphism of the animals included in the list of auspicious dreams. This tradition of the pre-Christian era goes on to describe that the elephant has four tusks, looking like radiant drops of dew, or a heap of pearls, or the sea of milk, possessing a radiance like the moon, huge as the silvery mountain Vaitādhya, while from his temples oozed out the sweet liquid that attracts the swarns of bees.24
The bull which we know to be an early symbol for Sivă Himself is the second in order of the auspicious dreams. The mode of representing Nandipada has, in fact, a very old history. A humped bull alone formed at first the symbol for Siva.? The coin with this representation, which belongs to Appollodotus of the 2nd cent. B.C., bears, curiously enough, the effigy of an elephant on its obverse. This association of the elephant with the bull in Saiva coins, is, therefore, of a special significance and was already current is so early an age as the 2nd cent. B.C. The bull is the cognisance of the first Tīrthankara Adinātha and probably accounts for the name Rşabhadeva.76 In fact, the bull and the elephant came to be associated with the Tirthankara and their Yakşas and Yakṣiṇīs so often that it seems that the two symbols were very much in favour with the Jains as well, perhaps owing to their prevalence and popularity in the more influential sect of Aryāvarta, Brāhmanism, and more particularly of Saivism. Bhadrabāhu draws our attention to the conspicuous hump greatly ornamented as it is (aisiribhava-pillaņā-Visappaita-kamta-sohartu
74. Kalpasūtru (tr. by J. Stevenson), p. 42. 75. pl. XXX, fig. 109, H. I. I. A. 76. Nirvanākalikā, p. 34, cf, - tatrādyam kanakāvadātavļsalānchanamuttarāşadhājātam
dhanūrāsim ceti, also, Hemacandra: Abhidhāna-cintāmaņi : urvo výsabhalānchanamabhūd bhagavato jananyä сa caturdasanām svapnanamadavrṣabho drstastena rşabhah (vide, also, Mrs. Stevenson : Heart of Jainism, p. 22, fn.3)