Article: Supārśva

Pārśva and Supārśva and the other Jinas
Image by Ramesh Kumar © French Institute of Pondicherry

All Jinas have individual emblems – lāñchanas – and colours that help to identify them in artwork. They also have attendant deities known as yakṣa and yakṣī, who often appear flanking them in art.

Supārśvanātha or Lord Supārśva is also one of the few Jinas whose iconography is distinctive, as he is often – but not always – shown with snakehoods above his head. This association with snakes is stated, for instance, in the standard biography of this Jina as narrated by Hemacandra in the Triṣaṣṭi-śalākā-puruṣa-caritra. It is said to go back to the time when the Jina-to-be was an embryo:

The Queen [dreamed she] saw herself asleep on a couch of serpents which had one hood, five hoods, and nine hoods

Johnson’s translation, volume II, page 308

In the account of this Jina’s general preaching following his attainment of omniscience – the samavasaraṇa – the god Śakra creates snakes over Supārśva’s head that are reminiscent of those his mother saw in her dream. This is narrated as something which then became characteristic of all samavasaraṇas.

The antiquity of this association, however, is unknown. No reference to it is found either in early sources or in another Śvetāmbara biography of this Jina, the Cauppaṇṇa-mahāpurisa-cariya, written in the ninth century by Śīlānka. Nor is there a mention in the Digambara version in Guṇabhadra’s Uttarapurāṇa. It is likely that this association, which is so important in the case of the 23rd Jina, Pārśvanātha or Lord Pārśva, was carried over to Supārśva because of the similarity of their names.

In theory, the snakes are shown above the head for Supārśva, and behind the body for Pārśva, but this distinction is far from being observed everywhere. In many cases it is thus difficult to distinguish between depictions of the two Jinas when there are no personal emblems or inscriptions.

The number of snakehoods is theoretically different for both, namely:

• Supārśva – one, five or nine
• Pārśva – three or seven.

But, again, this principle is not followed strictly in available images. For instance there are Pārśva images with five snakehoods and Supārśva images with no snakehood at all.

Figure of Supārśva
Image by Ramesh Kumar © French Institute of Pondicherry

Besides the basic information, the sources provide more details on various topics. These are almost infinite and vary depending on the sources. Such information differs between Śvetāmbaras and Digambaras. Here are only a few instances of extra detail.

All of the princes who become Jinas are carried on a palanquin to the park where they perform the ritual gesture of initiation into monastic life – dīkṣā. The palanquin of Supārśvanātha or Lord Supārśva is named Manoharā. On this occasion, he is accompanied by numerous kings.

He performs a two-day fast. The next day he breaks his fast at the house of King Mahendra in the town of Pāṭalīkhaṇḍa.

Supārśva wanders for nine months as an ordinary ascetic and reaches omniscience under a śirīṣa tree.

Painting of Supārśva
Image by British Library © CC0 1.0 (Creative Commons Public Domain)

With about 8,700 stanzas in Sanskrit, the Supāsa-nāha-cariya was written in 1142 CE (1199 of the Vikrama era) by the monk Lakṣmaṇa-gaṇi, pupil of Hemacandra-sūri of the Harṣapurīya-gaccha monastic order. The text is divided into three chapters (Chaudhari 1973: 81–82).

The first one narrates at length the previous births of the future seventh Jina as a human being or god. It explains how he gained the category of karma that implies he would become a Tīrthaṃkara – Tīrthaṃkara-nāma-karman.

The second chapter narrates Supārśva’s birth, marriage and initiation into monastic life.

The third one presents the Jina’s attainment of omniscience and is also an extensive exposition of various ascetic practices and postures. It is supplemented with a number of sermons and intervening stories which cover:

• true doctrine
• the 12 vows of the lay man and their transgressions
• all sorts of other subjects.

An illustrated manuscript of this work, covering 443 folios and written in 1422 CE (1479 of the Vikrama era) in Delavada in Mewar, Rajasthan, has 37 lively and colourful paintings (list in Punyavijaya 1956). Some of them are reproduced in Muni Punyavijaya’s article and a few also in the book New Documents of Jaina Painting (Moti Chandra and U. P. Shah 1975).

Supārśva
Image by Nalini Balbir © Nalini Balbir

Supārśvanātha or Lord Supārśva is quite popular. As mentioned above, there is some amount of confusion between Supārśva and the 23rd Jina Pārśvanātha or Lord Pārśva. Thus there may be many more images available of the former than thought at first sight.

Supārśva is known through a number of stone sculptures (Shah 1987: 139–142), such as:

• those in cave 8 and 9 at Khanda-giri, in Orissa
• the standing marble image in the Jain temple at Pālaḍī, a few miles from Sirohi in Rajasthan, which shows him with five snakehoods, identified from the inscription dated 1291 CE
• the mutilated standing image with five snakehoods and the svastika in the Neminātha temple at Kumbharia, north Gujarat
• the standing images in temples number 5 and 28 at Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh, which have five snakehoods, with the latter figure also showing the emblem of this Jina, the svastika.

Metal images showing Supārśva alone or with other Jinas are also available in temples and museums.