Sambodhi 2011 Vol 34

Author(s): Jitendra B Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 12

M. A. Dhaky
SAMBODH
preliminary observations based on a study of the many examples of the weapon scattered through the known range in terms of regions and periods of Indian divinity sculptures that have bearing on the discussions to follow. First, as in the realm of figural sculpture in general, the trident-forms, too, resolve into two broader, clearly defined and distinctive typographical zones, the Northern and the Southern. Within the Northern zone may again be reckoned four major type areas, the Eastern, the Central, the Upper, and the Western Indian, each neatly defined and showing inter-relationships or inter-connections, gradations and progressive changes inside the many period-styles that developed and decayed in those areas. In the Southern zone, the Tamil and the Tamil influenced areas show varieties differing from those in the Karnāta and Karnāta-affiliated areas. Second, the formal details, the relative proportions of the trident's constituent parts also varied from region to region but more so from period to periodo
While we may find no practical difficulty in describing the morphology of the trident on the basis purely of observation and in terms of our coining or drawn from practical sources, it would be more realistic, nay, authentic if we used the nomenclature which ancients used, and incidentally find out as to how they reckoned, envisioned, and processed the trident.
To my knowledge, there are at least three literary works which among other things deal with the morphology of divinities' attributes and the information embodied therein is useful in the present context in that the trisula and its componental parts find mention in at least two of them. Of the three, the Aparājitaprcchā of Bhuvana-deva (c. late 12th or early 13th century), 10 a vāstusastra-treatize dealing in main with the Maru-Gurjara (Western Indian) architecture and iconography, is clearer in its perception and exposition of the trident's from. The second, namely the Laksanasamuccaya of Vairocani, an Eastern Indian Saivāgama of either the 11th or the 13th century, 11 is somewhat obscure as regards details of the apportionments but none the less clear enough on the nomenclature of the sub-parts involved. The third is the Karanāgama, 12 originally a Northern work of about the sixth or the seventh century, 13 southernized and very probably enlarged and extended in the medieval period, 14 has its twenty-first chapter dealing with astras, sacred arms wherein, if not triśāla at least the kulisa (thunderbolt) has been treated at some length. Though the verses in the selfsame passage are at places fragmentary, there is still the terminological information which is of value in the context of the present discussion. The work, unlike the other two, also lends some insight as regards the methods by which the astra in question is delineated, in painting or sculpting.
The triśūla, as the Aparājitaprcchā enjoins, should be of 16 units, out of which 10 are to be allocated to the danda (staff), 1 to the nābhiyrttaka (circular holder at staff's upper-end) and the remaining 5, by reductio ad absurdum, to the weapon-head which the latter holds, and, which, as the text goes on giving further details, consists of