Ambika Ji

Ambika, also called Kushmandini, is the yakshi who attends Neminatha, the twenty-second tirthankara. She is not a tirthankara but a guardian deity, and she is among the most recognisable figures in all Jain art. You will know her at once: seated on a lion, beneath a mango tree, with two sons.

Kushmandini, and Amba. This platform keys her as a Jain figure specifically, because Ambika is also a common epithet of the Hindu goddess.

Golden in most depictions, dark blue or greenish in some South Indian examples. Mount: a lion. Setting: beneath a mango tree, sometimes described as a wish-granting tree bearing mangoes. Four-armed: two right hands holding a mango and a mango branch, two left holding a rein, with her two sons, Priyankara and Shubhankara, one often on her lap or beside her.

Her origin is unusual: she was a mortal woman. Tradition names her Agnila, or Amba, of Girinagar, married to Soma, with two sons. She fed Varadatta, a monk and disciple of Neminatha, who was breaking a fast. Her husband and family, enraged at the giving away of food, threw her out of the house. Fleeing with her sons, she was miraculously provided for: a tree gave fruit, a dry well filled with water. From that passage she became a goddess. The story is worth reading for what it values. The act that costs her everything is an act of dana, giving alms to an ascetic, and the tradition vindicates her against her own household.

She attends Neminatha. Her sons are Priyankara and Shubhankara, and they appear with her in her images.

Why a yakshi is worshipped, as with Padmavati: tirthankaras are fully liberated and, being free of passion, do not act in the world or answer requests. Shasana-devatas like Ambika remain within the cycle of rebirth and are held capable of worldly intervention, so devotees petition them for protection, fertility, prosperity and welfare. Ambika is worshipped independently on that basis. Her principal shrine is on Girnar, the mountain of Neminatha's kalyanakas, which this platform carries. The earliest reference to the temple is traced to the eighth century and the present structure to the fifteenth. She also appears in the Manmodi Caves of the second century CE, at Kodinar in Gujarat, and at Shravanabelagola.

No Digambara or Shvetambara divergence was established in the sources consulted. The overlap with Hinduism here is not merely nominal, and should be stated plainly. Ambika and Amba are common epithets of the Hindu goddess Parvati or Durga, and the Ambika shrine on Girnar is documented as having passed under Hindu administration. Girnar already carries an active Hindu and Jain dispute over its fifth peak, recorded on that site's page. This platform describes both traditions' claims and adjudicates neither.