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Lord Mahavira
Let us now probe into the matter which had confused Dr. Buhler to interpret the inscription 'bhagaba Nemeso' found on a broken slab at Mathura (pl. 3, see cover) and which the great scholar has ingeniously proved to be the representation of the Nativity of Lord Mahâvîra. Buhler has critically gone through the Jaina texts and very minutely observed the available representations of the story found at Mathura. He identifies divine (Bhagava) Nameso with Harinegamesi to Kalpasutra, the commander of the foot-troops of Indra and god Naigameshin of the Nemina-thacharita and the demon Naigamesha and Nejamesha of the Gribya Sutra and the medical Samhitas. Thereafter, he asserts that this deity/demi god or demon Naigmesha, identical with Brahmanical deity Naigameya, a son or companion of the war-god Skanda, appears to be a goat-headed therianthropomorphic deity whom the Mahabharata describes as 'Chagavaktra' or goat-faced. He further states that as the note to the Kalpasutra (in connection with Harinegamesi) suggests, 'the Negamesi of Hari', i.e., 'Negamesi is the servant of Indra'. It was probably through a wrong impression that the deity has been represented in the mediaeval pictures as a man with the head of an antelope (ancient illustrated copy of Kalpasutra by Jacobi).18 He adds that the early Brahmanical authors appear to have made a similar mistake by describing the deity as ramheaded on account of seeming connection of the name (of the deity) with mesha, or ram. Buhler also observes that the lithographs published in the Arch. Sev. Reports Vol. XX plate IV, 2-5 by Sir A. Cunningham of the four mutilated statues now preserved in the Mathura museum were meant to represent the nativity of Mahâvîra and disagress with Cunningham that the two male figures who are found to be engaged in exchanging the embryos are representations of goat-headed diety, not an ox-headed one as assumed by Cunningham. So far as representations are concerned, the observation of Buhler appears to be a correct one. But there still remains a scope to examine critically whether it was only the phonetic similarity which induced the Brahmanical writers to represent the deity as
