Jain Journal 1980 04

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

Page 52

APRIL, 1980
Are Salabhanjika still alive in India ? Yes, we met one at a children's garden-party in Patna, though she did not know she was one.
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Wherever, in an Indian village, a tree, overful with joy of life, displays its splendour of blossoms, women will be overwhelmed with emotion and surround such a tree to bend down its branches, to pluck their blossoms for a puja and to put some in their beautiful hair so performing salabhanjika every day.
The patient observer of this graceful natural play may feel tempted to do as Bihari did and exclaim: 'Stay, beautiful image, for ever with your tender arm raised into the green foliage of the tree,'
Playfully she will smile back: 'Here is your salabhanjika, but I do not care so much about my designation as you do!'
The description of the Silpaprakāśa does not refer to any human being or animal as support on which a salabhanjika-dalamalika would be standing as we can see on older examples as for instance Culakoka Devata in Bharhut standing on an elephant (Coomar., op. cit., Pl. XI, 39, other example ibidem, Pl.XX,75, from the Mathura side).
In this respect, the description of the Silpaprakasa goes with what we can see on the facades of temples in Bhuvaneshvara and Konaraka (tenth-twelfth centuries A.D.). Here, mostly, decorated pedestals appear instead. The description of a salabhanjia given in Rāyapasenaijja (quoted by me on pp. 151,152) does not mention any specific type of support except the general remark: supaitthiyao-'well fixed' or 'well supported'.
At the begining of this article the Bharhut figures of Culakoka Devata and Canda Yakhi (cf. Figs. 1 and 2) are mentioned as the earliest available sculptures depicting the woman and tree motif of the salabhanjika type. In his article on 'Dohada or the Woman and Tree Motif 35 K. Rama Pisharoti sees a dohada motif represented in these images. He says:
'Yaksi Canda, Bharhut, stands with her right foot planted firm on a fish-tailed horse, 36 her left leg and arm entwine the stem of a tree, while with her right hand she lowers a bough. Here is a clear instance of the Latavestika type of Alingana-dohada, and the tree must presumably be Kuravaka.368 Equally typical of the same kind of dohada is the figure of Culakoka Devata.' (op. cit., p.115)