12 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 8o 



find Nandi ca Vardhanascaiva nagare N andivardhane , " Nandi and 

 Vardhana, these twain, have their seat in the city of Nandivard- 

 hana " ; a Chinese commentator on the Avatamsaka Sutra has stated 

 that this city was in Magadha, as indeed the Sutra itself implies. All 

 this is of interest because two Yaksa statues (pi. 2, figs, i and 2) 

 have been found near Patna, and they bear inscriptions of which one 

 reads yakha ta vota naindi. The conclusion arrived at by Gangoly, 

 that the pair represent the tutelary Yaksas of Nandi vardhana may be 

 correct/ But the Mahdmayun list has also a Nandi Yaksa of Nandi- 

 nagara, separately mentioned. There are several Nandinagaras 

 known; one is frequently mentioned in the Saiici inscriptions. It 

 seems to me that the Patna figure designated as the Yaksa Nandi in 

 the inscription may just as well be Nandi of Nandinagara as Nandi 

 of Nandivardhana ; this would leave the second statue unidentified, 

 as it is not named in the inscription. In the same list Manibhadra and 

 Purnabhadra are called brothers. Others mentioned include Visnu, 

 Karttikeya, Sahkara, Vibhisana, Krakucchanda, Suprabuddha, Dur- 

 yodhana, Arjuna, Naigamesa (tutelary Yaksa of Pancall), Makarad- 

 hvaja (=Kamadeva, the Buddhist Mara), and Vajrapani. The last 

 is said to be the Yaksa of Vulture's Peak, Rajagrha, where is his 

 krtalaya (" made abode," evidently a temple) ; in the Yakkha Suit as 

 Sakka ( ? Indra), who is called a Yakkha of Mara's faction, may not 

 be the same as the Yaksa Vajrapani. Naigamesa is the well-known 

 antelope-headed genius, Indra's commander-in-chief, who both in 

 Brahmanical and Jaina mythology is connected with the procreation 

 of children.^ 



^ Gangoly, O. C, in 'Modern Review, Oct. 1919. Also Chanda, R., Four An- 

 cient Yaksa statues, Univ. of Calcutta, Anthropological Papers, 3 (Journ. Dep. 

 Letters, IV, Calcutta, 1921), and references there cited. 



^ It will be seen that the list includes the names of orthodox Hindu deities, 

 Epic heroes, and others. Suprabuddha in Buddhist legend is the father-in-law 

 (rarely the grandfather) of the Buddha, and is one of the five persons who 

 suffered condign punishment for crimes committed against the Buddha or the 

 Order, one of the others being the Yaksa Nandaka. Krakucchanda is a former 

 Buddha. 



Saiikara is one of the well-known names of Siva, whose close connection with 

 Yaksas is shown in many ways, inter alia, by the existence of numerous tem- 

 ples dedicated to him under names which are those of Yaksas, e. g., the Viru- 

 paksa temple at Pattadkadal. Siva's followers called Parisadas are huge-bellied 

 like Yak-sas. Cf. Hopkins, Epic Mythology, pp. 221-222. 



For Naigamesa (ya) (Nejamesa, Naigameya, Harinegamesi) see Winternitz 

 in J. R. A. S., 189s, pp. 149 ff. ; Keith, Religion and Philosophy of the Veda, 

 p. 242. Naigamesa in the Epic is generally a goat-faced form of Agni. As 

 Harinegamesi he plays an important part in the conception and birth legend of 



