Jain Journal 1980 04

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 41

APRIL, 1980
153
whom the prominent parts of the branches are seized with the left hand'. Salao'branches' at the end of the Prakritic compound has been clearly brought to bear upon sala-bhanjia!
It is evident from this that sala in the sense of Sala-tree has become obsolete with regard to the term salabhanjia in the Ardhamagadhi text (A Mg.) and that the first member of this compound is understood now in the sense of 'branch'. I would therefore suggest the following verbal translation of the term salabhanjia : 'carving of a female bending down the branch of a tree'.
Vogel refers to the synonymous term salastri (op. cit. p. 207) occurring in Bharata's Nātyaśāstra II, 83-84 : salastribhir alamkrtah and translates “The woman of the Sala-tree'. The meaning however obtained from the description of a salabhanjia in the above mentioned AMg. passages makes the translation 'woman with the branch of a tree' more likely. This interpretation does not exclude the possibility that authors might have had also in mind Sala-tree, when mentioning our term.
A question here might well be asked regarding the age of our term. An indication for its considerable antiquity lies in the fact that this term appears in several places of the Jaina Svetambara canon in an archaic type of a metre, called Vedha, which leads us, according to Herrmann Jacobi's investigations, up to the first century B.C. 14
Let me quote the following examples : anega-khambha-saya-samnivittham lila-tthiya-salabhanjiyayam (Ray., op. cit., p. 76),15 which represents two Vedhas of four ganas each :
U-U/-UU | U—U1--1--| 00-1.0-U1--||
These two Vedhas are placed in a Varnaka (description) of a yanavimana, which Suriyabha wants to be conjured up immediately, beginning with khippam eva bho devanu ...and ending with siggha-gamanam nama janavimanam16 viuvvahi.
Translation of the two Vedhas : '(The self moving car), which is placed on several hundred pillars and where the branch bending girls stand in a sportive pose.'
Another passage reads with reference to a maham picchagharayam"? (a big entertainment pavilion) in the middle of a jana-vima