vidyadhara
विद्याधर vidyādharaA 'holder of vidya (knowledge or magic)', a sky-faring supernatural being who possesses magical powers and wisdom, prominent in later Sanskrit story-literature.
Where this term appears
- The Artists of the Sky Treatise
And the vidyādharas — the "holders of vidyā ," of knowledge or magic — are the sky-faring adepts who fly not on wings but on their own attainment, wielding supernatural powers and enchanted knowledge, sweeping …
- The Classes of the Gods Treatise
… lists the classes — the deva-yoni , the "kinds of divine birth": the vidyādharas, the apsarases, the yakṣas and rakṣases, the gandharvas and kinnaras, the piśācas, the guhyakas, the siddhas, and the bhūtas — t…
- 779 CE, and the Śabaras are already a costume Treatise
The men in the bark are Vidyādharas , knowledge-holders, the sky-going semi-divine aristocrats of Indian story, and the forest dress is something they have put on.
- Jagannātha and Viśvāvasu Treatise
Chapter 4 went to the year 779, to a Jain Prakrit romance in which the practitioners of the Mahāsābarī vidyā , the great Śābara knowledge, turn out to be Vidyādharas in Śabara costume.
- Śavaripa the hunter Treatise
In the Kuvalayamālā of 779, chapter 4's Vidyādharas put on Śabara costume to practise the Śābara knowledge, and the same berries and bark appear there six hundred years earlier.
- The word, reclaimed or not Treatise
…yotanasūri's Kuvalayamālā , the practitioners of the Śābarī vidyā are Vidyādharas dressed as Śabaras, so that Śabara-ness is already a costume in the earliest securely dated attestation, which is what a categor…