How a buck/stag could have become a lion!

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

Palaniappa at aol.com wrote:

>I have a theory as to how lion could have replaced stag/buck as the vehicle
>of DurgA. I got this idea when I came across the name of a Tantric text,
>'mRgendratantra'. 'mRga' can mean both a deer as well as an animal in
>general. If there were an early text mentioning the vehicle of DurgA as
>'mRgendra', is it possible that it was interpreted as the 'king of animals'
>instead of 'king of deers'? While the original could have referred to a
>buck/stag as the 'king of deers', the mistaken interpretation could have >led to 'lion' as the 'king of animals'.

However, the mR^igendrAgama is about shiva and has little to do with
durgA! Hence it is more probable that the title of the text would have
to do with the pati-pashu-pAsha of the shaivite texts and not literally
the "king of animals". Moreover shiva is not associated with lions in
any text, AFAIK.

Ramakrishnan.