Jain Journal 1980 04

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

Page 78

APRIL, 1980
183
plants and nature by her presence. This motif reminds strongly of the appearance of new Udumbara buds when the Bodhisattva was born and of their unfolding when his boyhood commenced. (cf. Note 40), About relations between Arabic and European poetry compare S. Singer, Arabische and europaische Poesie im Mittelalter (Abhandl. d. preuss. Akad.
d. Wiss., phil.-hist. KL. 13), 1918. 36 Canda Yaksi does not stand on a fish-tailed horse, but on a fish-tailed animal
with a head which looks like that of a sheep. 368 The botanical identification of the Bharhut trees is difficult. If Canda
Yaksi is really depicted under a Kurabaka tree seems to me uncertain. A. Cunningham in his book The Stupa of Bharhut, London, 1879, mentions on p.132, No.3, an inscription of another relief reading : bhagavato vesabhuno bodhisalo-The Sala Bodhi tree of the Buddha Visvabhu' and gives the photo of the tree on plate XXIX 2. Comparing the original in the Indian Museum in Calcutta with the Canda Yaksi tree and with what I have been made acquainted under the designation of Sala-trees in India, I cannot come to a
definite result. 37 N. G. Majumdar remarks in A Guide to the Sculptures in the Indian Museum.
Part I, Delhi, 1937, as follows: 'Canda and Culakoka bend by their right hand one of the boughs of a tree, evidently to break it (as in the salabhanjika play), and their left arm is thrown around the trunk and left leg around the stem. In his Note 1 on p.20 Majumdar also refers to the (pp. 22,23) games sahakarabhanjika (plucing mango fruits), puspavacayika (plucking flowers) mentioned in the Kamasutra.' He further observes : 'Mayadevi, the Buddha's mother, went to Lumbini to take part in the Salabhanjika play (Mahavastu, II 18,19) and was delivered of the child as
she was holding on to the branch of a Sala tree.' 38 This term is used in the Silpaprakasa, quoted by me on p. 162. 89 Cf, Note 36a. 40 There is no mention of any dohada-pregnancy desire with regard to Mayadevi
in the text of the Nidanakatha, Mahavastu, and the Lalitavistara. The Chinese version, Ta-pen-ching, to the Mahavadanasutra 4g. 1, narrating the life of one of the former Buddhas, Vipasyin, stresses that his mother was free from desires : 'His mother's heart was pure, it had no thoughts of passion. She had abandoned all lascivious desires, no one could influence her and she was not intimate : she did not inflame the fire of lust. The mothers of all Buddhas are always pure.' Translated from the German rendering in E. Waldschmidt's Das Mahavadanasutra. Sanskrit, verglichen mit dem Pali nebst einer Analyse der in chinesischer Uebersetzung ueberlieferten Parallel-versionen, auf Grund von Turfan Handschriften herausgegeoen, Teil II, Textbearbeitung Akademie-Verlag, Berlin, 1956, p. 87, Note 3 (Abbrev, MAV). This is in contrast with parallel events in the history of the Jaina Tirthankara Arhat Malli. Dohada awakes, after the third month of pregnancy has been completed in Prabhavati, the mother of her. (8th chapter of Nayadhammakahao, No.31 of my edition) This goes well with an explanation of dohada in Susruta I, 332 referring to the development of the garbha (embryo); caturthe (masi) sarvangapratyangavibhagah pravyaktataro bhavati/ garbhahardayapravyaktabhavac cetanadhatur abhivyakto bhavati/ kasmat tatsthanatvat/ tasmad garbhas caturthe masy abhiprayam indriyarthesu karoti/ dyihrdayam ca narim dauhridinim acaksate//