Jain Temples of Rajasthan

Author(s): Sehdav Kumar
Publisher: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Art Abhinav Publications

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the Buddhist Avalokitesvara and Tāră, and several of Jain tirthankaras. A red lotus is the emblem of the sixth Jain tirthankara Padmasambhava, and a blue lotus of the twenty-first tirtharkara Neminātha.
The self-fertilising power of the lotus makes it a symbol of the androgynous creative god that gives life to matter'; thus it is also symbolic of goddess earth - Bhudevi. As the birthplace of Lakşmi and of the Creator-god Brahmā himself, the lotus becomes the metaphoric womb of creation, and the womb of the Universe. "Though itself of ancient inception", writes Maury, "the lotus emblem appears to have been an elaboration of a preexistent, simpler design: a floral configuration of the circle, always and everywhere the elementary ideograph of the female organs, subsumed in India by the term yoni. This role as the fundamental allegory of female sexuality has endowed the flower with its aura of sacred mystery and imparted to its diagrammatic abstraction a dimension of the Cosmic. Whether in hylic or emblematic form, the lotus has come to present the ultimate equation of female being and female magic: its petals enclose the magic of generation and regeneration, its centre is the omphalos of the universe, the source and substance of life itself."6
Fire is verily the lotus of this Earth, the Sun the lotus of the yonder Sky.
-Satapatha Brahmana? he lotus blooms every day with the rising sun and closes its petals in the evenings. Thus it not only symbolises the endless cycle of life and death but also the cosmic cycle of birth and dissolution of the universe. The lotus thus is an appropriate iconographic symbol of Sürya. Sürya has often two lotuses in his hands, symbolising the upper, påra, and nether, apăra, waters, "representing respectively the possibilities of existence 'above' or 'below' in yonder world and this world, Heaven and Earth."
This also suggests why many of the gods from the Gupta period on, but specially the Buddhas and the Jain tīrthankaras are given a lotus halo behind their heads as well as a lotus support below their feet, one symbolising the heaven and the other the earth, "the two flowers, one behind the 'head' and the other beneath the 'feet', and each a reflection of the other, representing the grounds of existence in extenso...between them."
At another level the lotus represents earth and water, and thus it is an appropriate attribute of Sri-Lakşmi, the earth mother personifying all possibilities of existence and abundance.
She is described as padmavāsini, 'dweller in the lotus' and pustida, 'provider of the nourishment. A frequently used Sanskrit word for lotus is puskara, with the same root as puşti meaning nourishment. Sri-Lakşmi is shown in early Indian art as GajaLakşmi, being bathed by elephants symbolising the sky.
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