During my recent trip to Uttarakhand , I was faced with a problem I had never encountered before. We were passing through Delhi, but we had hardly any time in the city. On earlier visits when I have had to change trains/flights at Delhi, I have always arrived in the morning and left again at night, visiting relatives in between. This time, I was arriving in the city at night, and leaving again early in the morning. There was hardly any time to visit people. I would only have a couple of hours with them before I’d have to leave again. For the first time, we considered booking a hotel, but there again, we were hesitant about the actual hotels, the costs involved, and the logistics of getting from the airport to the railway station and then back again from the station to the airport. That’s when we remembered reading something about a corporate-managed lounge at Delhi station. We soon figured out that we could book online and pay by the hour. Besides, we also learnt that there wasn’t ju
We tend to associate female deities with Hinduism. It was therefore, interesting to see different representations of female goddesses in the Jain caves of Ellora. Ambika is the Goddess of Prosperity. She is the Yakshi or the protector - goddess of the 22nd Teerthankara, Neminath. Here are two of her figures, seen in the caves of Ellora...
Here she is, in Cave 32, represented as mounted on her lion, under a mango tree. She holds a mango and noose in her hand, though neither are clearly visible because of the condition of the figure. Behind her are her two sons -Priyankara and Shubankara. There are two other people by her side, either attendants or those asking for boons...
We see her again in Cave 33, with almost the same representation, albeit with slight differences... different artist, can we say?
Isn't it interesting to see how some concepts recur across religions, in spite of apparent differences?
P.S. She appears in a lot more forms across the caves, but these are the only images I captured which are worth sharing. Looks like another trip to Ellora is called for, with a better camera this time!
Interesting, I always thought Goddesses appeared pretty late in Jain Iconography...
ReplyDeleteI would have thought so too, Anuradha. But, to be honest, at the time I visited Ellora, I had no clue Jainism had goddesses at all! This came as a big surprise.
DeleteI thought the first one is Indrani w/o Indra. Seems my understanding is incorrect.
ReplyDeleteThough not as important as God, in jainism we do worship goddess. During navratri we have kumkumaarchan and aarthi on all nine days to goddess..
ReplyDeleteGoddess Ambika, yakshi of Neminath bhagwan is well known as Kushmaandini devi..
Goddesses were always prominent in Jainism
ReplyDeleteAs yakshinis of tirthankar
namely Ambika mata
Chakreshwari Devi
Padmavati mata
Saraswati mata
And many more.