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Jaina-Rupa-Mandana Upāsakadasāh and such other Jaina canonical texts represent traditions which are older than the Mahămâyūri, even though parts of the available text editions may be of a later date.
The Mahabharata (3.83.23) speaks of a Yakşiņi shrine at RajagȚha as "world renowned". The Bhagavati refers to the Gunaśila Caitya at Rajagrha, but we do not know to whom it was dedicated. However, it seems that the Mahābhārata probably referred to the ancient Yakşi shrine of the tutelary goddess of Magadha, called Nandā, whom, even in Hiuen-Tasang's time, people prayed for offspring, she is called the wife of Panchika, a yakşa, and is represented in Buddhist legend as a devouress of children by small-pox, an ogress, whom Buddha converted and promised offerings as a patroness of fertility and children. If a conjecture be allowed this Nandā is the same as Revati or Şaşthi of the Käśyapa Samhita.44 Hāriti of the Buddhists,45 Bahuputrikā, the queen of Manibhadra-Purnabhadra according to Jaina texts who in her malefic aspects was known as various Putanās, and who in Jainism became popular in the benefic form of Ambika-devi. The very fact that Ambikä sits under the shade of a mango-tree is reminiscent of the old practice of worshipping the yaksas and yaksiņis on stone platforms under trees. 452
Coomaraswamy, after a careful analysis of Hindu, Buddhist and Jaina evidences, wrote: “The essential element of a Yaksa holystead is a stone-table or altar (veyaddi-manco) placed beaeath the tree sacred to the yakşa. The bhavanam of the yakkha Suciloma at Gaya is particularly described as a stone couch (dias or altar) by or on which the Buddha rested, the words used are tankita mañco, explained in the commentary to mean a stone slab resting on four other stones (Samyutta Nikāya, Yakkha Suttas, Chp. X, Kindred Sayings I, p. 264). At the Pungabhaddaceiya ... there were not only altars (and probably an image) in an elaborate temple, but also a decorated altar beneath an Asoka tree in the grove. It was just such an altar beneath a sacred tree that served as the Bodhisattva's seat on the night of the Great Enlightenment; Sujātā's maid-servant, indeed, mistakes the Bodhisattva for the tree-spirit himself (Nidánakathā). It is very evident that the sacred tree and altar represent a combination taken over by Buddhism from older cults, and in the case of the Bodhi-tree we see the transference actually in progress."46
This obtains confirmation from a passage in the Jaina Vasudevahindi which says: "In the Saliggama in the Magaha (Magadha) Janapada, of the Bharata (Kşetra), there is the Jakkha called Sumano (Sumanah), his platform (silā -altar, vedikā) under the Asoka-tree was called Sumana-silā, there the people worship him (tattha nam jana pûyamti)."47
This then is the reason for regarding the Jaina Ambikā, sitting under a tree and accompanied by children, as being modelled after an earlier most popular Yakşiņi image, associated with children, who must be Bahuputrikā, or Revati-Şaşthi or Nandā. Possibly these are different names or aspects, evolved in different periods, of one and the same ancient goddess.
Coomaraswamy's remarks about the Buddha image apply equally to the Jina image. The canonical works note the Caitya-trees of each of the twenty-four Tirtharkaras and in the description of the Samavasarana, the Asoka tree spreads over the caitya-trees. It is one of the Eight Mahā-Prätihāryas of a Jina. The conception of the Prätihäryas is again borrowed from the ancient Yaksa worship, for, as we have seen, the yaksa image is often described as Sannihiya-pădihere.
Older forms, beliefs and practices continue for ages in art and society with changes effected according to the requirements of the age and the sect adopting them and are revived over and over again in different ways. A similar instance is the type of the Tirthankara image once very popular in the South, occasionally also met with in the North in Gujarat, wherein the Jina sits on a big pitha, under a big tree whose foliage is spread out over the figure of the Jina.48 Some of the icons of this type found in the Puddhukotta State go back to the post-Gupta age and it would appear they had as their model the tree and Yaksa worship of ancient times obtained in the South.49
To revert to Nandā who was converted by Buddha and who was the tutelary goddess of Rajagsha, it must be remembered that Nandā is an ancient goddess. She is one of the forms of Devi, a name of Gauri;50 her name signifies joy, affluence, prosperity. In the Kubera-Häriti group of sculptures, described by Dr. Agrawala from the Mathura Museum, the wives of Kubera have been identified as Lakşmi, Hārīti and Bhadra. They might be called Lakşmi, Nanda and Bhadra, all the three signifying Beauty, Prosperity and Auspiciousness, or Beauty, Abundance, Bliss and Auspiciousness. The first, sixth and eleventh days
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