Vaikuṇṭha-Viśvarūpa Vol. I

Disk: alpahasttereporta-1/Bi

TSM 1989/90

DFG-Az.: Ma 1069/3-1

Kennwort: VAIKUNTH-VISVARUPA

Sonderbericht 1.1.(13./14.)-Bijoliyam

THE TRICEPHALOUS VAḌAVĀMUKHĪ AT BIJOLIYAM:

a combined Yoginī and Śakti form of Pārvatī-Durgā

T. S. Maxwell

Introduction

On the external wall surfaces of two adjacent temples at Bljoliyam, Rajasthan, are two images which have not yet been interpreted. The central head in each case is that of a horse. This is flanked by the profile heads of the Vaiṣṇava avatāras Nṛsiṃha and Varāha, as they appear in images of the Vaikuṇṭha type. One image, affixed to the Mahākāla temple, represents a male deity; the other, on the Uṇḍeśvara temple, depicts a goddess. Both sculptures stand approximately 66cm high on plinths 40cm wide. In previous discussions, they have been treated as separate images. without regard to the context of the iconographic programmes in which hey occur. Neither the history of their form nor their religious significance- has been explained. Preliminary descriptions have been published by Banerji1, Desai2 and Agrawala3.

1. The Mahākāla temple sculpture

1.1 Iconographical description

The sculpture, a high relief on a rectangular slab, is cemented into the south wall of the Mahākāla temple porch (Plate 1). This is clearly not its original position, and the Mahākāla, dateable to the llth/l2th century AD, is certainly not its original temple. The central and proper left heads of the image are badly damaged. Nevertheless, there is sufficient detail remaining to enable one to identify the central head as having been that of a horse: the pricked ears are placed well forward and there is some fine carving at the top of the head and on the brow, representing the mane. The features of the left side-head (Plate 3) are obliterated, but clearly depicted the Varāha, the top being smooth and curved downward, as in the better preserved boar-head of the Uṇḍeśvara temple image. Protruding from the proper right side is the head of a lion, its fangs bared (Plate 2).

The three-headed god stands in an ābhaṅgaposture with the weight on the right foot (Plate 1). The clothing and body ornaments are almost identical to those of the Uṇḍeśvara temple goddess. The image appears to have had four arms; all the hands and attributes are broken off. To the proper right of this image, a diminutive male figure stands upon the base, its hands in namaskāramudrā.There is no counterpart on the left.

1.2 Iconographic sources

In its damaged state, the only iconographically treatable feature of the image is the unusual combination of heads. This particular combination of Vaiṣṇava forms has a known iconographlcal source in the late 6th or early 7th century Viśvarūpa sculptures from Samalaji in northern Gujarat. These images represent seated Viṣṇu having three human heads and projecting multiple aspects of himself upward to form a large populated prabhāmaṇḍala. The best preserved is installed in a small shrine on the bank of the Mesvo River at Samalaji, where it is worshipped today as the daughter of Brahms, called Kalasi Chokra ni Ma. Among the many figures clustered above the heads of Viṣṇu, the first to emerge from the central head of the god, rising vertically from his crown, is Hayagrīva. From the left shoulder of this horse-headed emanation rises, at an angle of forty-five degrees, the Varāha incarnation, while from the corresponding point on his right side rises Narasiṃha. The Boar and Man-Lion thus appear as second projections from Visnu, their immediate source being Hayagsva, the first emanation. The further emanatory forms appear above and around this primary triad.

The art historical process by which these svatāra-projections became abbreviated to appear as mere heads on either side of the central face, as in the Mahākāla temple sculpture at Bijoliyam, is not recorded in the known archaeological remains of Western India. In the Mathura region, however, just such a process had taken place during the Kuṣāṇa period, perhaps 350 years before the Samalaji sculpture and as much as 700 years earlier than the Mahākāla temple image. The Kuṣāṇa precedent consisted of what were almost certainly early Pāṅcarātra sculptures representing the evolutionary axis or Viśākhayūpa taking the form of a populated column (Nand), ramifying figures very like the Samalaji primary triad but representing the Caturvyūha and its hexadic Śakticounterpart (Mathura), followed by the first three-headed sculptures of such gods as Brahms (Mathura) and Śiva (Rang Mahal)4. As two of the sculptures in this process were discovered in what is now Rajasthan, one has to assume that both the emanatory or ramifying forms (Samalaji) and the abbreviated forms (Bijoliyam) were created in Western India, without local intermediate phases of development, on the basis of these Kuṣāṇa and late- Kuṣāṇa precedents. Elsewhere in India, Hayagrīva is not depicted as the primary projection of Viśvarūpa, although he often appears among the figures in the vertical register above the central head of Viṣṇu. In the Kannauj sculptures, he is the apical figure, replacing Śiva in the Samalaji icon; the Viśvarūpa image at Deogarh represents him as the second in the vertical chain of emanations. Only in Western India at Samalaji does he appear’ as the first to spring from Viṣṇu and as source of the two incarnations, Man-Lion and Boar.

The art historical source of this 11th-century image at Bijoliyam, original cult context, are thus known, but the identity of the god is not clear. It could be interpreted, in accordance with the art historical evidence, as a primary emanation of Viṣṇu which projects the Narasiṃha and Varāha incarnations as secondary forms, but this is not compatible with the exclusively Śaiva character of the Bijoliyam temple complex. However, the female image on the neighbouring Uṇḍeśvara temple brings the mythological and religious background into sharper focus.

2. The Uṇḍeśvara temple sculpture

2.1 Iconographical description

Discussions of the identity of this goddess (Plate 4) have centred exclusively on the heads, with the result that one of the most important aspects of the image has been overlooked, namely that it is syncretistic. If the long vanamālāand the combination of heads are clearly Vaiṣṇava symbols, the rest of the iconography which remains undamaged is, equally clearly, Śaiva.

The goddess stands in a slight ābhaṅgaposture with the weight on the left foot, the right knee being slightly bent. The three heads are very similar to those originally appearing on the male image on the Mahākāla temple (compare Plates 2, 3, 5, 6, 7). An object was originally held on either side of the three heads; these are now damaged, but the broken surface above the rear right hand seems to have been a triśūla.Upon the palm of her left front hand she holds a shallow kapāla from which she is depicted in the act of picking something with the fingers of the right. The gesture clearly shows that she is eating something from the skull-bowl. Below, to the right of her feet, stands a lion, its back to her and its left forepaw raised, but turning its head back to look up at the goddess with a bulging eye, its fangs bared, as if attracted by its mistress’s business with the bowl and expecting a morsel from it. The second right hand of the goddess, over which is looped an akṣamālā, is extended downward toward the animal, in the boon-granting gesture (varadamudrā)which appears to promise the animal its share from the bowl. On the opposite side of the plinth a fire is shown in the conventional form of tongues of flame rising from a brazier. All these details are very clearly represented.

2.2 The triple identity of the goddess

2.2.1 The two lions

There is a marked similarity between the face of the lion at the feet of the goddess and that of her lion side-head. This, appearing in conjunction with the boar side-head which is its counterpart on the left, must represent the female form of the Narasiṃha avatāra of Viṣṇu; the heads of these two animals appear on either side of the central Vāsudeva face as the emanating incarnations — Narasiṃha and Varāha — of Viṣṇu in the icon-type known generally as ‘Vaikuṇṭha’. The lion on the base of the stele, however, is fully theriomorphic and so by definition can have no connexion with the Narasiṃha side-head. Standing at her feet, the animal must be the vāhanaof the goddess. The lion is the conveyance and fighting ally of one of the earliest syncretistic Hindu icons, namely the goddess Durgā as Mahiṣāsuramardinī, Destroyer of the Buffalo Demon. The lion was given to Durgā by Himavān when she was created out of the wrath of all the gods for the destruction of the demon, as recounted in the Devīmāhātmya(2.10-31). The text, in which the avenging goddess is known by names that are mainly Vaiṣṇava (Viṣṇuśakti, Nārāyaṇī etc.), yields further information.

2.2.2 The lion and the boar

Vārahī and Nārasiṃhī are among the Śaktis who issue from the bodies of the gods to assist the goddess in the battle against the asura army of Śumbha and Niśumbha in the third myth contained in the Devīmāhātmya.The sequence of the emanation of three of the Śaktis is in this passage (8.12-21) seems to point to their source being the three-headed Viṣṇu -concept represented in the 5th-century sculpture of Mathura:

The Śaktis of Brahmā, Īśa (Śiva), Viṣṇu and Indra, issuing from their bodies, in their forms went to Caṇḍikā (the form of the Goddess in this particular myth) … Vaiṣṇavī arrived, then … the Śakti of Hari (Viṣṇu ) in his Yajṅa-Varāha form also arrived there, having a Varāha body … Nārasiṃhī reached there, having the form of Nṛsiṃha . . .

(8.18-20)

The Devīmāhātmya, which has been dated to about 550 AD5, thus yields some valuable mythological concepts with regard to the identity of the Unḍeśvara temple goddess. Firstly, the Vaiṣṇava-Śaiva syncretism evident in the icon finds a mythological precedent in the syncretistic, but independent, Goddess of the text. Secondly, the female counterparts or Śaktisof the Nṛsiṃha and Varāha avatāras are given a textual basis (and the siṃha-mukhaof the image, being identified as the Śakti Nārasiṃhī, is clearly differentiated from the siṃha-vāhana). Thirdby, the physical conjunction of the Avatāra-Śaktis with the single body of a goddess is explained:

The Goddess said: “I am alone in the world here; who is there other than I? See — these [Śaktis]aremy own powers (vibhūtayaḥ),entering me.” Then all those goddesses, Brahmāṇī and so forth, went into the body of the Goddess; Ambikā [one of the many names of the one Goddess] was then one alone. The goddess said: “I stood here, by means of my power (vibhutyā),in many forms; those I have drawn in; I stand alone”.

(10.4-8)

There are several points in the text, moreover, at which the Goddess either is an emanation of another figure, or herself projects aspects of her nature; anatomical multiplicity in the iconography Is merely a partial correspondence to the dynamics of myth. Finally, after the slaying of the arch-demon, Śumbha, in the third myth of the Devīmāhātmya,the Goddess is praised by the gods who are led by Agni (Vahni as the sacred fire, at 11.2); in their praises, they address her with many epithets, among them Varāha-rūpinī;and in the next stanza speak of her “Man-Lion form”(nṛsiṃha-rūpa).

2.2.3 The fire

It is particularly important to notice that the Goddess in this myth arose from the “body-sheath” (śarīra-kośa) of Pārvatī (it is for this reason that the emanatory Goddess is also known as Kauśikī. “She-Out-Of-The-Sheath”: 5.85,87), daughter of Himavān who added the lion to the weaponry of her transformation. The fire to the left of the Uṇḍeśvara temple goddess is one of the five fires of the paṅcāgnitapasof Pārvatī, thus identifying this multiheaded image with three of the independent Śaktiswhose corporate identity, through Durgā, is with Pārvatī herself.

2.2.4 The horse

The text of the Devīmāhātmyadoes not include a horse faced Śaktiamong the forms of the Goddess. The source of this iconography lies in the identities of the Yoginīs.Certainly there were circular Yoginī temples in western Central India, such as those at Mitauli and Dudhai, both in northern Madhya Pradesh6 far closer to Bijoliyam, on the border with Rajasthan, the site of Hinglajgadh has yielded many Yoginī sculptures7 dateable to the 10th century.

Among the sets of such images from other sites which are inscribed. One from Shahdol in the area of the more famous Bheraghat, with a horse head and seated on a lion, bears an inscription reading “Itarālā”; the name seems to be without classical significance, and the inscriptions themselves are unreliable. A horse headed Yoginī image from the Bheraghat temple itself is named “Erudi”8 another at Hirapur9, near Bhubanesvar, is not inscribed.

The Agnipurāṇa(52.1-g and 146.18-28) lists sixty-four and sixty-three names, the twentieth and twenty-second being Vaḍavāmukhī (“Mare-faced”)10; Monier-Williams cites the Caturvargacintāmaniof Hemādri (late 13th – early 14th century) as giving Vaḍabāmukhī (“Mare-faced”) as the name of a Yoginā11; the form Vaḍavāmukhī apparently occurs in the outer 64 compart-ments of a khecarīcakradescribed in an undated manuscript on Yoginīs entitled Śrī Matottaratantra12.Both the Kālikāpuṛāṇa (54.43-44 and 63.37-43) and the Bengali Bṛhadnandikeśvarapurāṇagive Nārasimhī and Vārāhī13 without mentioning a horse faced form. Hayagrīvā, Siṃhamukhī (not Nārasiṃhī) and Vārāhī all occur in the same list of 64 names in the Skandapurāṇa(45.34-41)14, suggesting that all three faces of the Bijoliyam goddess could have represented Yoginīs. The appellation Hayānanā (“Horse-Faced”) occurs in the second Agnipurāṇalist in thirty-third position15, denoting a Yoginī in the company of Vaiṣṇavī, and as a Yoginī-name in Hemādri16.

The western projection of the maṇḍapa of the Uṇḍeśvara temple has a frieze compartmented figures along the top, above the chādya (Plate 8). The image at the extreme southern end, adjacent to seated Vaiṣṇavī in conformity with the Agnipurāṇagrouping, represents single-headed Hayagrīvā or Hayānarā (Plate 9); the horse-faced goddess is seated with the gadāin the upper right hand and the cakrain the upper left.

The existing early mediaeval Yoginī statuary from eastern, central, and western North India shows a predilection for animal-headed forms; indeed, at certain sites, such as Lokhari in Uttar Pradesh, they are in the majority17. An 11th-century iconographical form which incorporates the ancient combination of lion and boar side-heads (begun at Mathura, in a completely different cult context, in the 5th century), with another animal headed figure from the Yoginī context is therefore art-historically unsurprising. In religious terms, the rise of the yoginī iconographies in stone sculpture represents a coalescence of unorthodox (tantric) forms with orthodox (brahmanical) imagery, and insofar as these can ever be separated the Uṇḍeśvara temple goddess is symptomatic of the same tendency in reverse. The reason, for this coalescence at Bljoliyam is suggested below.

3. Identifications and reconstruction

The Bijoliyam goddess is most clearly to be identified as the Śaktis Nārsiṃhī and Vārāhi emdodied in the mare-faced (hayānanā, vaḍavāmukhī) Yoginī known in inscriptions as Erudi or Itarālā. She is definitely not the mere consort of the unidentified god having the same three heads on the Mahākāla temple; he is, rather, the subordinate male reflex (Hayagrīva integrated with Nṛsiṃha and Varāha, all issuing from one source in Viṣṇu, and deriving as a group from 6th-century Viśvarūpa iconography) of this triple Śakti.

As to the original placement of this sculpture in an iconographical programme, this question is complicated, as in all similar situations, by the factors of natural decay, wilfuldestruction, and unrecorded local renovation. The navabhūmiMahākāla temple, in its architectural style, is certainly younger than the Uṇḍeśvara, belonging to the 12th or 13th century AD. The sculpture of the tricephalous god has been fairly recently cemented into the maṇḍapawall of the Mahākāla, where it is stylistically out of place. Being a product of the 11th century, and clearly the iconographical counterpart of the goddess on the Uṇḍeśvara temple, it may be suggested that he belongs to one of the two now empty niches opposite each other on the Uṇḍeśvara maṇḍapa(numbers 03 and 23 in the listing of the iconographical programme18). The stele would most appropriately be restored to niche 03 on the north side, between kevala Narasiṃha and the group of two dikpālas(Yama and Vāyu); the goddess would then be immediately flanked by Śiva Gajāsurasaṃhāra and an aspect of Brahmā on the west, and by the two mixed forms of Śiva (Harihara and Ardhanārīśvara) on the east. The transformation from male to female deities, begun with Ardhanārīśvara, Is continued beyond Kubera and Candraśekhara to the east, with the images of her sisters Cāmuṇḍa and Vaiṣṇavī on the north wall of the antarālaand in the north bhadraof the sanctum.

The wider context for this goddess is provided by the corresponding image in the main bhadra(niche 23) on the south side of the maṇḍapa.This severely damaged sculpture represents the three-headed (intentional catur-mukhi) Śakti Brahmāṇī. She is depicted with the haṃsa-vāhanaof Brahmā and, like the horse-faced goddess opposite, with one of the five fires of Pārvatī. Brahmāṇī is thus also identified with the Daughter of the Mountain, and hence with her emanation Durgā, the immediate source of all the Śaktis,of whom this Brahmāṇī is one. The empty niche (27) on the south wall of the maṇḍapawould have housed her male counterpart, catur-mukha Brahmā; this specific Brahmā image is lost.

The religious purpose of this complicated iconography on the Uṇḍeśvara temple was to show the transforming power of Devī, that is, of Pārvatī, the Śaktiof Śiva to whom the temple is consecrated. The male figure with the horse-head flanked by those of the Man-Lion and the Boar, which I suggest be restored to the niche (03) adjacent to Narasiṃha (02) on the north side, must ther efore ultimately be identified with Śiva himself, as the form in which he appears to complement the more powerful transformation of his Śakti whose image (08) is installed in the principal niche.