Jain Journal 1980 04

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

Page 56

APRIL, 1980
ficent work. He lets her take part in one of the flower-games mentioned in the Avadanaŝataka, the Käsikä and in the Kamasutra. She is thus a true representation of a salabhanjika-irrespective of how we would classify the tree. My friend, Mr. Sen Gupta of the Indian Museum of Calcutta, to whose kind help I am deeply indebted, sees a Kunda-(Yasmin)tree in it. 39 If there is a Sala-tree depicted or not is irrelevant in the matter as the poses of the Culakoka Devata and Canda Yaksi images are in full concordance with the textual evidence regarding salabhanjika. We should also not forget that all these women and tree figures in Bharhut are included in the iconographic programme of Buddhist Stupa. Remembering that this pose is exactly the same, in which Maya Devi gives birth to the Bodhisattva, the symbolic coherence between both becomes evident.40 They display their branch bending gestures in sympathy with the ausipicious event of the Bodhisattva's birth! This fine interrelationship is of greater importance from the viewpoint of the Stupa with its railings as a whole than merely bringing these figures in connection with the salabhanjika-flower-game and its pose only.
In Buddhist Stupa such salabhanjika, representations do not fulfil a decorative purpose only but clearly allude to the happy events in the Lumbini Grove.
167
The Bharhut figures contain still more of interest to us. They disclose that the oldest representations of salabhanjika which have come down to us depict devatas and Yaksis, superhuman beings, which are closely associated with trees. That Yaksas had also their residence on trees has been pointed out by Dr. Jitendra Nath Banerjea in Development of Hindu Iconography, 2nd rev. ed., University of Calcutta, 1956, p. 341. He mentions an early archaeological evidence of a tree spirit whose face is drawn on a tree trunk from the Amaravati sculptures. (op. cit., Pl. VIII, Fig. 5) He further remarks: 'Another fragmentary sculpture (op. cit., Pl. XIII, Fig. 2) finally settles this point; it shows the head and upper part of a big-eyed Yaksa beneath some sort of a structure with the top portion of a tree and probably a heap of coins arranged in cylindrical form in the back-ground. The inscription in Brahmi script of the second or first century B.C. gives the iedntity of the Yaksa as Candra Mukha, the dweller of the Vakula (tree).' Dr. Banerjea approves of Sivaramamurti's reading: Yakho Cada-mukho vaku(la)nivasi as
correct.
We may add from literary sources a passage in the Jaina text Vasudevahindi quoted in Dr. U. P. Sha's article 'Yaksa Worship in Early Jaina Literature'41: bharahe magaha-janavae sali-ggame