Gatekeeper gods; Skanda in Buddhism

[Nobumi Iyanaga]

Dear Mr. Wujastyk,
Dear Mr. Fitzgerald,

Thank you very much for your replies and for the references on Skanda as
demon sending disease to children.

=======

Dear Mr. Sundaresan

Thank you very much for your reply.

At 6:47 PM -0700 7/17/99, Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote:
>
> Ganesha and Karttikeya in the said Elephanta cave are found flanking the
> seven mothers, and are on the same wall. It is not a shrine to the mothers
> with the two sons as door-keepers. The entire sculpture seems to have been
> conceived as one whole. In many other sculptures of the seven mothers, the
> two sons are also depicted, the reason being to highlight the benign nature
> of the mothers instead of the ferocious. This is a different function than
> that of gatekeepers.

Yes, I think you are right.  I read again the passage of Wendy Doniger, who
write:

  Two of the figures in the east wing shrine are sons of Shiva who are
  doorkeepers: Ganesha [Pl. 13] and Karttikeya (or Skanda) [Pl. 14].  They
  flank the central shrines as their stories flank his; they are outgrowths
  of him, literally and symbolically...

I would say that I probably misunderstood the meaning of this passage; the
author does not say that these two sons of "Siva are in function of
doorkeepers specifically *there*, at that place of east wing shrine of
Elephanta; she only says that (in general) these two gods may be in function
of doorkeeper in some myths or occasions.

But while I know that Ga.ne"sa, Nandin, Viiraka, are doorkeepers in some
myths, I know of no myth in which Skand serves as a doorkeeper.  Is there
any such myth?

On the other hand, I would like to know if at the entrance of Hindu ("Saiva)
temples, one or the other of these two gods (Ga.ne"sa and/or Skanda) serve
as gatekeeper.

Thank you in advance!

=========

Dear Mr. Iyer,

Thank you for your reply.

At 5:18 AM -0700 7/19/99, Venkatraman Iyer wrote:
>
>    Does Weituo or Jiantuo in Chinese mean some thing like
>   "the one with a spear" or "the beautiful god"?
>

Well, "Weituo" and "Jiantuo" are *transliterations*, meaning that they are
supposed to transpose the *pronunciation* of Skanda (or Skandha?) in
Chinese, and not at all its meaning.

Of course, you may be surprised that such syllables may reproduce in any way
the pronunciation of Skand[h]a.  As to the "Weituo", I think (with other
scholars) that it is a result of a mistake of scribe -- normally, these two
syllables can be a transliteration of Veda, but not of Skand[h]a.  As the
first character, "wei" can be very similar to another character which is
pronounced "jian", I think the original should have been "Jiantuo".  Now,
the modern pronunciation of "Jiantuo" may be something like "Chi-en-do" (as
this is pronounced in English), but the older pronunciation would have been
something like "ken-da" (I am not sure at all as to the old Chinese
pronunciation; the Japanese pronunciation is "ken-da", and Japanese
pronunciations often are close to older Chinese pronunciation).  Now, as
every Chinese character has a vowel, the first part of a sequence of two
consonants (like "sk...") is often omitted in transliterations.  I mean, if
the pronunciation "Skand[h]a" may be transliterated as "Seu-ken-da" with
three characters, or the first character can be omitted, so that it becomes
"Ken-da".  -- Please note that I have no special knowledge as to Chinese
linguistics or the theory of Chinese transliterations of Sanskrit words, so
all I write here may be not very accurate.  But I hope that this is better
than nothing.

Best regards to all!

Nobumi Iyanaga
Tokyo,
Japan