Jain Journal 2007 10

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

Page 27

JAIN JOURNAL: VOL-XLII. NO.2 OCTOBER 2007
beginning of all auspicious ceremonies. The most comprehensive meaning put to the Svastikā and the figures of three dots above surmounted by a crescent with a dot above is that the four arms of the Svastikā represent the Gati or state in which a Jiva may be born as either a denizen of hell (nārki) or of heaven (devată) a man (mānușya) or a beast (tiryanc); the three little dots or heaps symbolising the three jewels of right knowledge, right faith and right conduct, which enables a man to reach Mokșa represented by the sign of the crescent and the dot above it.
The last but not the least is the Nandyāvarta belonging to the Aștmangala group. The figure is a geometrical device like the Svastikā but shows a more developed stage of the art and is clearly of a deeper significance then the former. The adaptation of this device in art and archaelogy is very late, at least far later than the Svastikā. It is double lined figure rectangular in shape and the lines are inter-woven, so to say, as to form a nine-coned figure. The Ācāradinakara explains the symbol as signifying the fact of the devotee of the Jina being the recipient of all sacred treasures that remain glowing at his service through the grace of the Lord.43
43. tvatsevakänäm Jinanāthadikṣu sarvāsu sarve nidhayat sphuranti atascaturdhā navakonanandyāvartaḥ satäm vartayatäm dukhāni
-- Acāradinakara, loc. cit.