Jain Tantric Diagrams of the Goddess Padmāvatī

Abstract This chapter compares some popular modern tantric diagrams of the Jain goddess Padmāvatī with some yantras outlined in the eleventh-century Jain Sanskrit text, the Bhairavapadmāvatīkalpa. Scholarship has identified the Bhairavapadmāvatīkalpa, a manual on the propitiation of various yantras, including those to the goddess Padmāvatī, as one of the most important “Jain Tantras.” An examination of modern Jain yantras shows, however, that the yantras of the Bhairavapadmāvatīkalpa have had little impact on Jain ritual practice. Rather than finding the yantras of this text in modern temples and homes, instead, we find yantras filled with generic Sanskrit praises to goddesses, diagrams connected to medieval praise poems (stotra), and “magic squares,” or auspicious grids of numbers (aṅkayantra). The meditative practices, mantras, and deities of the Bhairavapadmāvatīkalpa reflect general tantric trends common to medieval Jain and non-Jain texts, but the text does not seem to be particularly influential today.