viditam anuvadanto viśvam etad yathāvad vidadhati nigamāntāḥ kevalaṃ yanmayatvam |
aviditabahubhūmā nityam antarvidhattāṃ hayavaravadano ‘sau sannidhis sannidhiṃ naḥ ||)

The second part of the verse is relatively clear, although I am sure I am missing something in the equation of Hayagrīva with sannidhi:

Let He, as proximity*, with the face of a horse, whose opulence is not understood, take perpetually place close to us ||

The first part is less clear and the following translation is only tentative (comments are welcome):

The Upaniṣads, by repeating what has been understood, properly distribute this all [knowledge], which consists purely of Him |

Now, the tricky part is the echo between vidita/avidita and vidadhati/antarvidhattām. Given that the the first part of the verse refers to the Upaniṣads and the second part refers directly to Hayagrīva, the gist of the passage appears to lie in the idea that the Upaniṣads are an excellent device for gathering knowledge, but Hayagarīva surpasses all possible human knowledge.

*I would now read it as “Let he, the depository of good things” (the puṇya for this translation accrues to H.I.’s comment below).

For Hayagrīva in other Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta texts, see this post. For Hayagrīva in Vaiṣṇava temples, see here.

1. Yoga-Hayagrīva, seated in padmāsana, holding in the upper arms discus and conch and in the lower ones the Vedas (represented as a thin book) and the jñānamudrā
2. Lakṣmī-Hayagrīva, seated in padmāsana and with the same attributes, but with Lakṣmī sitting on his left knee

Both are very well-spread, in temples, paper and cloth paintings and both appear to originate from Veṅkaṭanātha’s writings, the Yoga-Hayagrīva from his Hayagrīvastotra whereas the Lakṣmī-Hayagrīva seems to be a modification of the first according to the theology of Śrī Vaiṣṇavism (in which Lakṣmī is inseparable from Viṣṇu) and is described in Veṅkaṭanātha’s Śatadūṣaṇī. The center of his cult seems to have been the temple at Thiruvahindrapuram, which is also considered the “home-temple” of the Vaṭakalai religion. Unfortunately, I have never been there, nor can I plan a trip there in the immediate future. Thus, I would welcome comments and corrections by the readers.

The following one is a photo of the whole temple.

Next follows the photo of (possibly, since I have not been there) the main icon of Hayagrīva found either in the main temple or in one nearby. Readers will immediately recognise that it conforms to the Yoga-Hayagrīva typology.

Last, an icon of Lakṣmī-Hayagrīva, whose origin I do not know. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a good image of the Lakṣmī-Hayagrīva image in the Thiruvahindrapuram temple (it is reproduced as Fig. 12a in Sridhara Babu 1990).
For more information on Hayagrīva and his connection with Veṅkaṭanātha, you can see this presentation. On Hayagrīva in general, see the posts under this tag.

The occurrences of Hayagrīva in the Mahābhārata (henceforth MBh) have been neatly summarised in van Gulik 1935, pp. 10–15 and in Nayar 1994, chapter 3. Van Gulik notes that in different portions of the Mahābhārata we find Hayagrīva connected with the recitation of the Vedas and that in MBh 12.335.43–69 Viṣṇu horse-headed brings back the Vedas and kills their thieves, the two asuras Madhu and Kaiṭabha, who had stolen them from Brahmā. The following is an excerpts of the main action (my tentative translation):

Having entered the mythical stream, [Viṣṇu-Hayagrīva] performed the supreme Yoga |

Performing the sound according to the rules of phonetics, he pronounced the Oṃ || 12.353.50 ||

The sound was resonant and went in each direction and was charming |

It was in the whole earth and had all good qualities || 12.353.51 ||

Then, the two asuras, made up an agreement regarding the Vedas (presumably: regarding when to come back and pick them up) |

and having threw them on the bank of the mythical stream, they run whence the sound came from || 12.353.52 ||

At that point, the king god carrying a horse head, |

Hari, grasped all the Vedas which had arrived to the bank of the mythical stream || 12.353.53 ||

He gave them back to Brahmā and went then back to his own nature |

[…] Then, the two [demons] sons of Danu, Madhu and Kaiṭabha, who did not see anything [as the source of the charming sound they had head before] |

went back quickly to the place [where they had left the Vedas] and they looked || 12.353.55 ||

Where the Vedas had been thrown, the place was empty! |

[…] Then there was a fight between them and Nārāyaṇa |

The two Madhu and Kaiṭabha, whose bodies where filled with rajas and tamas, |

were killed by the [now become] ‘Killer of Madhu’ (Madhusūdana, a name of Viṣṇu), who thereby pleased Brahmā || 12.335.64 ||

rasāṁ punaḥ praviṣṭaś ca yogaṁ paramam āsthitaḥ |
śaikṣaṁ svaraṁ samāsthāya om iti prāsr̥jat svaram || 12.353.50 ||
sa svaraḥ sānunādī ca sarvagaḥ snigdha eva ca |
babhūvāntarmahībhūtaḥ sarvabhūtaguṇoditaḥ || 12.353.51 ||
tatas tāv asurau kr̥tvā vedān samayabandhanān |
rasātale vinikṣipya yataḥ śabdas tato drutau || 12.353.52 ||
etasminn antare rājan devo hayaśirodharaḥ |
jagrāha vedān akhilān rasātalagatān hariḥ |
prādāc ca brahmaṇe bhūyas tataḥ svāṁ prakr̥tiṁ gataḥ || 12.353.53 ||
[…]
atha kiṁ cid apaśyantau dānavau madhukaiṭabhau |
punar ājagmatus tatra vegitau paśyatāṁ ca tau |
yatra vedā vinikṣiptās tat sthānaṁ śūnyam eva ca || 12.353.55 ||
[…]
atha yuddhaṁ samabhavat tayor nārāyaṇasya ca || || 12.353.63 ||
rajastamoviṣṭatanū tāv ubhau madhukaiṭabhau |
brahmaṇopacitiṁ kurvañ jaghāna madhusūdanaḥ || 12.353.64 ||

The connection with the Veda, perhaps both with their oral and written form (although it is possible that what is rescued is still an oral version of the Vedas), is here very evident. It is also interesting that this version of the rescue of the Vedas is the only one which will be referred to in Pāñcarātra and in Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta texts. I will also come back (in a future post) to the motif of the ocean, which is sometimes connected with Hayagrīva (although the word rasā might also mean ‘lower regions, hell’, its connection with tala `bank’, as well as the evidence derived from parallel texts, seem to suggest the meaning ‘stream’). However, the rationale for the fact that Viṣṇu assumed exactly a horse head is altogether absent (unlike in the case of his Matsya or Varāha-avatāras, where the transformation had to do with the task to be accomplished).

Another mention of Hayagrīva in the MBh has it figure as the name of a demon slaughtered by Viṣṇu:

The two Madhu and Kaiṭabha have been slain by [Viṣṇu], who lies on the ocean |

Having reached a different birth, Hayagrīva has also been slain in the same way || 5.128.49 ||

Instead, the following one is a summary of the Hayagrīva story in one of its Purāṇic forms:

A horse-headed Asura called Hayagriva once invoked Brahma and sought from him [\dots] a boon by which he could be defeated by none other than another being who also had a horse’s head, also called Hayagriva. Such a creature did not exist […] The Devas did not know what to do. […] When they went to Vishnu, they found him taking a nap, resting his chin on his bow. Taking the form of termites, the Devas ate into the bowstring so that the bow shaft snapped with such force that it severed Vishnu’s neck. To save the headless Vishnu, the Devas sacrificed a horse and placed its head on his neck. Vishnu thus transformed into a horse-headed being. […] Vishnu challenged Hayagrīva to a duel, smote him with his mace and restored the Veda. […] Brahma then restored Vishnu’s head. (Skanda Purāṇa). (Pattanaik 2006, s.v)

There are various versions of this story (other versions have, e.g., Viṣṇu loose his head because of a curse and involve no good finality for it, see Nayar 1994, chapter 3) and in any case the story looks somehow strange, since:

• it looks like an ad hoc explanation for Viṣṇu’s horse head
• it looks like the conflation of three different stories, i.e., the slaughter of the demon Hayagrīva, the slaughter of Madhu and Kaiṭabha, who had stolen the Vedas, and the slaughter of the demon Hiraṇyakaśipu. As for the latter, according to the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, after years of ascesis, the demon Hiraṇyakaśipu had obtained from Brahmā a boon of his choice and asked for immortality, but Brahmā refused. Therefore, Hiraṇyakaśipu asked to be killed neither by a human being nor by an animal, nor by a demon, nor by a God. He is at last killed by Viṣṇu in the form of Narasiṃha, who is neither a human being, nor an animal, nor a God. The request by Hayagrīva seems very similar.

It may be objected that once one does not accept the Purāṇic versions of the story, it is difficult to make sense of Viṣṇu’s horse head. In fact, this might be due to either an ancient (Vedic or perhaps Indoeuropean) attribute of a deity, linking it to the horse because of the latter’s importance in the Vedic mythology or the inclusion of a pre-existing deity in the Smārta pantheon through the device of turning it into an avatāra of Viṣṇu.

Thus, in my opinion Hayagrīva is a (perhaps Vedic) deity, perhaps assimilated to Viṣṇu or always identical with him, and the horse head is linked to the importance of the horse in the Vedic culture. The same importance has led to the invention of several demons with horse attributes, until someone conflated the two stories into one, with added details from other demons’ slaughters (Madhu and Kaiṭabha and Hiraṇyakaśipu).

On Hayagrīva see also this post (about the Hayaśīrśa Saṃhitā) and this one (about Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta texts on him).

1. Art scholars neither use nor appreciate hand outs (which I had prepared, following a comment here)
2. All art scholars, including the ones who do not discuss works of art, use slides and know how to do it (not too many, not too much text, not too few…), which is something I generally appreciate
3. Unlike scholars of Indian art (who do not generally feel they need to master an Indian language), it seems that many (or most) scholars of Chinese art master Chinese. Zhou Xiangpin even delivered (against expectations) his paper in Chinese language. If this had happened in a conference on Indian art, I imagine that most of the audience would have left, whereas in this case the audience seemed not to be distressed at all

The latter point, together with the presence of many young scholars from China, who probably had their travel financed by their home institutions, made me think a lot about the cultural agenda of the Chinese government. The Indian government seems much less interested in guiding Indological studies. (I can think of many reasons for that, but if you have further ones, please drop a comment below).

As for the contents of the conference, there were several parallel sessions, so that I could only attend some papers. I will dedicate a separate post on the topic of my panel, namely reuse. As for the others, I especially liked:

• Bianca Maria Rinaldi‘s paper on the Western reception of Chinese gardens: Bianca explained how the political attitude towards China modified the way the Western audience reacted to Chinese gardens. China was first presented by 17th–18th c. Jesuits as a model state, in which intellectuals ruled, whereas Europe was ruled by aristocratic feudataries. Chinese gardens were consequently appreciated for their simplicity, opposed to the magnitude of Versailles’ gardens. This meant that Chinese gardens were appreciated and their style was embraced by British planners as an alternative to the French (and Italian) style of gardening. Later on, namely by the end of the 18th c., however, the appreciation of China sinked and its gardens were rather blamed because of their lack of largeness and wide perspective. Bianca clearly explained how the latter was a conscious choice of Chinese gardeners who wanted to create one different scene after the other, highly valueing the surprise they would have generated in the viewers. However, Europeans rather decided to interpret it as a sign of the Chinese’s lack of courage, softness and decadence, with European gardens interpreted as more “adult” ones.

• (Here I am conditioned by my personal interests:) Valdas Jaskūnas’ paper on the influence of the Gurjara-Pratīhara dynasty on the structure and iconography in Early Medieval Vaiṣṇava temples and in the earliest Purāṇas. Valdas follows Ronald Inden’s idea that the Purāṇas were the result of an agency aiming at the creation of empires and consequently interpreted the earliest descriptions of temple-building in the Agni Purāṇa, the Matsya Purāṇa, the Garuḍa Purāṇa and —interestingly— the Hayaśīrṣa Pāñcarātra Saṃhitā. In fact, Vaslav argues, temples with an ambulatory around them constitute a three-level structure, with first the garbhagṛha, then the upper zone, to which only the emperor and his family could access, and then the outer level. Furthermore, the Pratīharas, maintains Vaslav, chose Vaiṣṇavism as a source of legitimation and this is reflected in the icongoraphy of the temple, especially in the dikpālas ‘direction guardians’.

As with previous conferences, this post only reflects my impressions of the conference. All errors (especially in fields I am not a specialist of, such as Chinese art) are entirely mine!
Should you be interested in my remarks on the history of gardens as a mirror of a society’s understanding of “nature”, read this article.

Hayagrīva at Khajurao

By contrast, after Veṅkaṭanātha, the iconography radically changes and two possibilities become fixed:

Yoga Hayagrīva: seated in padmāsana, carrying conch and discus in the upper hands and the Vedic book in the lower left one. The lower right one displays the jñānamūdrā or the vitarkamūdrā, both linked with the bestowing of knowledge.
Lakṣmī Hayagrīva: seated in lalitāsana, carrying the same attributes, displaying the same gesture, together with Lakṣmī.

Veṅkaṭanātha describes in his Hayagrīvastrotra the first one of the two, whereas the second form might be due to the fact that according to the Śrī Vaiṣṇava theology Viṣṇu is always connected with Lakṣmī. I could not detect any iconographic form of Hayagrīva previous to Veṅkaṭanātha and conforming to his description, thus:

What was the source of Veṅkaṭanātha’s precise description?

Probably an early and little studied Pāñcarātra Saṃhitā, the Hayaśīrṣa Saṃhitā (Hayaśirṣa means “horse-headed”, just like Hayagrīva and Aśvaśiras), of which only the first book has been edited (you can find it on Scribd). This describes Hayagrīva at least twice. First, in the first chapter of the first book, it says:

With four arms, carrying the club, the discus, the lotus and the bow (first part of v. 22ab)

caturbhujaṃ gadācakrapadmaśārṅgadharaṃ […]

However, in the 25th paṭala ‘chapter’ of the first book, the Hayaśīrṣa Saṃhitā describes Hayagrīva in a form very similar to the one found in the Hayagrīvastotra:

Or, one should let [an artist] make me with conch, discus, club and Vedas in the hands || 24 ||
Distinguished as having the face of a horse and four arms |
seated in padmāsana and connected in the upper part of the body with the Goddess || 25 ||

śaṅkhacakragadāvedapāṇiṃ vā kārayīta mām || 24 ||
aśvavaktraṃ caturbāhum evam eva vyavasthitam |
puṣkarāsanam adhyasthaṃ devīdvitayasaṃyuktaṃ || 25 ||

You will note that the two forms do not harmonise and that the first one seems more old-fashioned, insofar as it is closer to the pre-Veṅkaṭanātha iconography. The latter description, by contrast, is somehow intermediate between the Khajurao and the later ones, since it has too many attributes, so that it is at least possible to choose among them (whereas at later times the club is just forgotten). Furthermore, it is seated as in the Hayagrīvastotra, but connected to Lakṣmī. This shows that Veṅkaṭanātha probably had a precise model and that he chose to focus on what was according to him the real essence of Hayagrīva, with some specific attributes (I could imagine that the club was eliminated also because Veṅkaṭanātha wanted to be sure that the jñānamūdra and the Vedic book were always present) and without Lakṣmī.

I will discuss the iconography of Hayagrīva at the EAAA conference on Friday the 26th of September. You can read a preliminary draft of my presentation here. For another post on Hayagrīva, see here. I am grateful to Robert Leach and Marion Rastelli for discussing this issue with me.

(Musée Guimet, Cambodia)

More prominent than in Gaṇeśa is, however, his role as a teacher, so that he is often found in invocations together with one’s teachers, e.g.,

śrīmate hayavadanaparabrahmaṇe namaḥ |
śrīmate bhagavadrāmānujāya namaḥ |
śrīmate nigamāntamahādeśikāya [=vedāntadeśikāya] namaḥ |

“Honour to Hayagrīva!
Honour to Rāmānuja!
Honour to Vedānta Deśika!”

In other cases, the invocation assumes further elements, but the intellectual role of Hayagrīva is always in the foreground, e.g.,

nirmatsarā niśamayantv idam ādareṇa karmādhikāranayasūtragatiṃ samīcīm |

śārīrakeṇa ghaṭayaty ayam asmaduktyā devas turaṅgavadano jagadantarātmā ||

“ [This] correct path through the aphorisms about the rules regarding the ritual action (i.e., the Pūrvamīmāṃsāsūtra), this one God, horse-faced (i.e., Hayagrīva) and inner self of the world, he unites it with the Śārīraka (i.e., the Vedāntasūtra) by means of my voice”

(beginning of Vedānta Deśika’s Seśvaramīmāṃsā)

References to Hayagrīva’s myth and to the way he rescued the Vedas from one or two asuras are more rare and I found them only in later maṅgalas, e.g.,

vandeya śrīhayāsyāṃ vidhihitavidhaye naṣṭavedopadiṣṭaye labdhāvirbhāvam ādau suramunivinutaṃ sarvavidyādhidevam |

“I should salute at the beginning the venerable Hayagrīva, the tutelary deity of all knowledge, praised as the celestial sage, who managed to manifest [back] [the Vedas] for the sake of prescribing the fruitful which is in the [Vedic] prescriptions [and] for the sake of teaching the Vedas which had been destroyed [by the Asura]”

(beginning of the Satpathasañcāra commentary on Vedānta Deśika’s Mīmāṃsāpādukā)

Or:

śrīmān vājimukhaḥ śriyaṃ vitanutāṃ yenopadiṣṭo ‘khilo vedaḥ svātmabhuve ‘rpitaś ca punar apy āhṛtya hatvāsurau |
yasyāṃśaḥ sahajaiminir munivaro vyāsaḥ sa pārāśarimīmāṃsāṃ niramāt sakarmabhagavadjñaptyai vimuktipriyaḥ || 1 ||

The exalted Hayagrīva , through which the whole Veda has been taught, the Veda which has been transferred on the earth —which is his own self— after he had taken it back and killed the two asuras, may he spread splendor [upon us]!*

(beginning of the Sūkṣmārthaṭīkā on the SM)

Did you ever encounter Hayagrīva in similar situations? Connected with learning and the Vedas? Or with a determinate tradition?

*Many thanks to Gianni Pellegrini for a useful suggestion concerning this verse.