I am a bit late with this one – but Friday’s Day is Devi’s Day, and with Dawn just creeping over the horizon … outline reproduction of one of the incredible mural paintings from Panjikent, a Sogdian centre in modern-day Tajikistan.

The central figure to the depiction is Nana, mounted upon a lion-like vahana. As I’ve detailed in my previous work upon the subject – despite persistent prevarications from academia, not some “Mesopotamian import”, but instead a quite direct loka-lized depiction of the Indo-European Great Goddess – more usually known as Durga to the south in India, amidst many other theonyms and epithets.

The figure in the upper right is presumably a human supplicant, and there are quite an array of mythic and mytho-historical occurrences that are of an eminently similar theme. Particularly involving a prince or a king or some other such figure praying for the provision of a weapon or other such militarized blessing as required to then ride forth and unify his (soon-to-be) kingdom.

Now, the figure on the right … I may return to at some future time, because there’s quite a lot which can be said even of such a fragmentarily preserved presentation. One academic identification for Him is that this is Tishtrya / Tisya / Tir … and I do not necessarily disagree. Only choosing to enhance this identification with my own suite of annotation built from the Vedic observation that, to quote the Yajurveda: “Tisya is Rudra”.

And, looking upon it – without going into further detail as to the relevant iconography … a spear-wielding figure situated next to the lion-mounted Goddess, well, in Hindu terms we should consider the identification obvious.

In any case, even despite the sadly time-worn state of the rendering, it is nevertheless an enigmatically beautiful devotional set of imagery.

Jai Mata DI !