Jain Journal 1980 04

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

Page 47

158
was more suitable for denoting in general the carving of a woman bending down the branch of a tree than all the other terms mentioned in the Käsikä or in the Kamasutra. (cf. p. 152 of this article)
JAIN JOURNAL
Vogel has not touched upon this point in his article, as the abundant reference material on salabhanjia, available in the AMg. texts was not at his hand.
As far as Buddhist literature is concerned I am not able to add more material than that mentioned in the previous pages. I did not come across the term salabhanjia in the Jatakas, in the Lalitavistara the edited Gilgit Manuscripts, the Avadānakalpalata, the Pali Vinayapiṭaka and in the not yet edited Bhikṣuṇiprakīrṇaka. This rare occurrence is in striking contrast to the frequency of the term salabhanjia in the Jaina Prakrit texts.
I would venture to explain this in the following way: We have noted that the pose, in which Maya delivers her child, the uture Buddha, standing and seizing the branch of a tree, is the same pose which is characteristic for a salabhanjika. This motif had taken on a more and more worldly character in scuplture as well as in Prakrit texts, in which we found salabhanjia several times mentioned next to vala (Skt. vyala) in the passages quoted by me last. This might have caused Buddhist writers to be more reserved in using this term, which may have appeared to them as too much permeated with worldly flavour. Buddhists must have been far more sensitive on this point than any other community in India, as it is the pose in which the mother of the Bodhisattva had borne him.26
When Buddhist writers felt shy about mentioning the term salabhanjia, frequently used in Jaina texts, too often, this certainly does not exclude the use of the woman-tree motif in Buddhist art as the bracket figures in Sanci show. But in many cases, wherever this motif in Buddhist art appears, we have to think of the possibility of its alluding to the delivery motif of Maya at Lunbini. And even if no Sala-tree can be identified this possibility can be easily excluded as we also found the Plaksa-tree mentioned in connection with the birth of the Bodhisattva in the text of the Mahāvastu. The same tree is mentioned in a parallel passage of the Lalitavistara.27
With regard to toranasalabhanjika in Asvaghosa's Buddhacarita V. 52 Cowel's emendation of 'mala' into 'sala' is fully confirmed now by other manuscript material used in E. H. Johnston's edition of Buddha