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SOME COMMON ELEMENTS....
Vol. XIX, 1994-1995 Stūpa and Sivalingas
Structurally, a stūpa in its four-fold form consists of a Medhi, Anda, Harmikā and Chatrāvali. Its developed form with square Mehdi and semi spherical Anda has an interesting parallel in the siva lingas also. Some of these have a square lower part and sperical upper part similar to that of the Stupa. The identity is so close that instances are noted where a stūpa is also venerated as Śivalinga as Bhimeśvara, Dhingeśvara, Buddhamatha, etc.
It may be incidentally pointed out that the term linga does not mean only the membrance virile, but is more used in the sense of an indicator. In this sense, it is used in several places, under these circumstances, to understand śivalinga only as a sexual symbol suggests rather a lop-sided view of this symbolism of the universe, the benevolent and ascetic form of Śiva who is an unfathomable pillar. With proper analysis of the symbolism of Sivalinga on one side and that of the stūpa on the other it becomes clear that both of them seem to coincide on many points.
One of the interesting facts of this feature is the presentation of the figure of the Buddha in front of the stupa, and that of the form of Lakulīša in front portion of the Sivalinga. In both cases the background symbol and the image in the front show many common elements of the symbols with necessary differences.
When one examines the tranquil images of the Buddha in Dhyāna Mudrā, with those of the Jain Tirthamkaras, Yoga Vişnu, Siva as an Yogi etc., the conimon tradition of the Yoga School of self-improvement becomes clear, and brings the Nivịtti-mārga in sharp focus.
. Even the disposition of the hair as Daksiņāvarta on the head is a common
feature in the sculptural art. A superfical look at the images of Buddha, Tirthamkara and Lakulīša figure leads to confused identification that gets cleared by the examination of all iconographic characteristics of the complete figures. If only the broken images, and specially the heads are available, it becomes almost impossible to separate them.
