________________
Lord Mahâvîra
prescribes the swan vehicle for Siddhâyikâ. The swan vehicle reminds one of Sarasvati and the iconography of the goddess Siddhâyikâ in both the Svetambara and the Digambara traditions show her association with one or more symbols connected with a form of Sarasvati. Thus the book according to Vasunandi and Asadhara, or the vina in the Svetambara tradition may be noted. The lion is also a vehicle of Sarasvati represented as Vagdevi in the Brahmanical pantheon.
264
May be remebered that we have no evidence to find out by what name the Badami figure of the yaksi of Mahâvîra was known. She may tentatively be addressed as Siddhâyikâ. Douglas Barrett has described a. c. ninth century bronze of Mahâvîra, worshipped in a shrine at Karanja in the Akola district, which shows a fourarmed Yaksi Siddhâyikâ who "carries an axe and a lotus in her upper left and right hands, and a citron and a flower (?) in her lower" hands.20 The bronze probably hailed from Karnataka as can be inferred from a bronze in Nahara's collection, in similar style and having an inscription on its back.21
Siddhâyikâ (Dig. Twelve-Armed Variety)
The title-less-palm-leaf manuscript from Jina-Kanchi gives a twelve-armed form showing the sword, the shield, the flower, the arrow, the bow, the noose, the disc, the staff, the varada pose, the blue water-lily, and the abhaya-mudra. The eagle is her vahana.22
A twelve-armed figure of the goddess is reproduced by Ramacandran, from a temple in Jina-Kanchi. The goddess here stands on a lotus and shows in the first row of two hands, the cakra and the conch. In the second pair are found the goad and the noose, in the third, the arrow and the bow, in the fourth, the sword and the shield, in the fifth, the blue water-lily and the lotus and in the last or the bottom row the rosary and the varada.23 Siddhây:!: (Dig. Twenty-Armed Variety)
The seven yaksinis in the Navamuni Cave, Khandagiri, Orissa, date from c. ninth century A.D., as stated above, but these figures do not include any representation of Siddhâyikâ. However, in the Bharabhuji Cave near the Navamuni, are found complete sets of all the 24 Tirthankaras and the 24 Sasanadevis. But these figures stylistically seem to be of a later date, of about eleventh or twelfth
