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Parents of the Tirthankaras
children is but natural in sculptures based on the Buddhist Jambhala and Hâriti group. The temptation to identify these figures with yakshi and yakshi pairs, thus, is very strong, but again not without difficulties. For example, it would then become difficult to account for a symbol like the bull-cognizance which we see in a sculpture like Pl. 12a.
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Under all these circumstances, it is difficult to find out a final satisfactory solution of this group of sculptures. Almost all belong to the medieval age, a few are assignable to the early medieval period, but none are earlier than c. 7th century A.D. All the sculptures of this group post-date the introduction of a yaksha pair as attendants in Tîrthankara images, and it is, therefore, quite likely that this group of Jaina sculptures was modelled after the Buddhist Jambhala and Hâriti.18 These may have been worshipped, however, as parents of the Jinas in order to suit the exigencies of the Jaina religion. The variance in the representation of the minor figures and other peculiarities may be explained by the fact that canonical formulation of iconographic rules had not yet taken place allowing the artist liberties in the representations of at least the minor figures.
It may well be that a few figures were intended to represent a yaksha pair, especially in cases where the pair carries the brimming cup or the citron, but even here there are difficulties. In the case of the sculpture representing yaksha Gomedha and yakshi. Ambika of Neminatha discussed by Brindabanchandra Bhattacharyya,19 the lion-vehicle of Ambikâ is absent (the partly mutilated figure to the left of Ambikâ representing some worshipper and not an animal) and the five figures on the pedestal seem to be five planets or some minor deities. The sculpture was carved in an age (c. 13th century A.D.) when the iconography of Ambikâ was so well known that she would have certainly carried a mangobunch, rather than a citron, and would have been shown as standing under a mango tree. Matters are made more difficult in as much as is if she is not Ambikâ, she cannot be any other yakshi, for, it is only she according to the canons of Jaina iconography, who carries a child in her lap. Again all the sculptures of this type cannot be identified as Gomedha and Ambika, for the tree above
