Jain Journal 1980 04

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

Page 46

APRIL, 1980
157
with the desires and hopes of young women to have children, as pure, beautiful and gay as the blossoms of the Sala tree. From the point of view of her own fertility, it must have been considered as very auspicious for a young woman to catch hold of the branch of such a tree, wbich stands in the full splendour of its blossoms. It is interesting to note in this context that the Sala-tree is called an auspicious one (mangalasala-vanam and mangala-sala mulam) in the text of the Nidānakathā.
Once I was invited to a children's garden-party at my neighbour's house in Patna. It happened soon after Christmas and the occasion was the birthday of his second eldest daughter. This is the season when Patna earns its reputation as kusumapura-'town of flowers' and people there compete among themselves to have the most beautiful flowers in their gardens. The children started various games, in which I was myself involved. In one game I saw several children chasing a girl and trying to catch her till she reached a tree and touched its trunk. Immediately the others gave up chasing her, the girl advanced a little, bent one of its branches and looked around with so much joy over her little triumph in her eyes that I could not help but think of the salabhanjia pose ! Probably in order to crown her victory she plucked a blossom from the branch and fixed it in her hair. Playfully she clapped her hands and forgot to hold the branch of the tree. This bacame a signal for her playmates to surround her and to carry her away as a prisoner. In this game the tree renders protection to those who touch it.
When I enquired about the name of this game, no salabhanjika turned out. The children simply called this game coriya nuki*. This incident made it clear to me how the salabhanjia pose in Indian sculpture could have only come into existence. Artists of Ancient India must have watched and studied the graceful poses of young women when plucking flowers in their salabhanjika or uddalakapuspabhanjika games, and, enthusiastic about it, transformed it into the fixed artistic pose of a female seizing the branch of a tree.25
We have learned from our Prakrit sources that the term salabhanjia was applied to carvings of women seizing without heeding what trees they came from. This practice made the Sala-tree obsolete. (cf. pp. 152, 153)
This A Mg. passage, occuring in Ray., makes it also clear why just salabhanjia attained a general use and not perchance the other terms uddalakapuspabhanjika, viranapuspapracayika, and talabhanjika also referred to in the Kāśikā with regard to games in Eastern India : Sala can mean both 'branch of a tree' and 'Sala-tree'. So the term salabhanjia