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PARALIPOMENA ZUM SARVASARVÅTMAKATVAVADA II
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ALBRECHT WEZLER
practical outlook that the Vrkṣāyurveda does not show any vestiges of an influence exercised on it by the Sårkhya system, is a problem that cannot be solved at the moment: The alluring, but obviously very vast and dense jungle of the reception of Samkhya (as also its scope and its limits) still awaits its courageous explorer.
Appendir When I gave a talk on the subject of the present article in Vienna in 1987 my attention was kindly drawn in the ensuing discussion by my friend Gerhard Oberhammer to a painting of Edvard Munch's that practically illustrates the relation between a human corpse and a tree the unknown Samkhya author has in view. I finally succeeded in identifying the painting: It is given the title "Metabo lism or Assimilation of Nutritive Material or Two Living Beings and was, according to R. STANG," painted around 1898, but later changed by the artist, viz, around 1918. The painting forms part of the marvellous collection of the Oslo Kommunes kunstsamlinger, Munch-Museet and is catalogued there as "Metabolism 19899 (OKK M 419)". Its size is 175 x 143 cm. As it does not belong to the better known pieces and hence is not generally included in illustrated books on Munch, I deem it advisable to add to the present article at least a black-and-white reproduction of it. I am most grateful to the Oslo kommunes kunstsamlinger for granting me the permission to do so (see the plate on p. 315). Important additional information on the painting is given by A. EGGUM in the exhibition catalogue "Edvard Munch. Symbols and Images": "In its original form, the picture had another iconographic content. Up from the roots in the frame grew a small bush or a large flower with a small embryo inside. The woman's hand pointed toward the embryo and almost touched it ... A photograph from 1903 shows how centrally the motif was placed in the "Life Frieze", and we see that the upper part of the frame which depicts Christiania, was not yet completed. In his pamphlet The Life Frieze, Munch later expressed that he found the picture as necessary for the frieze as a buckle from the belt, even though it deviated somewhat from the general context. The picture was probably once repainted in connection with Munch's plans for a monumental execution of the "Life Frieze" motifs. A tree trunk between the man and the woman was added, which covers the
bush or flower with the embryo ... The picture was originally part of an eschatology of metabolism, but this aspect is almost gone in the final version...". However, the final version not only almost perfectly matches the particular pariņāma at issue in the present essay, but obviously also expresses much more clearly an idea that is met with, and more than once, in writings of Munch's, too. E.g. in his bocklet "Livsfrisen" - which most probably dates from 1918 - he says (p. 2)" "The motif of the largest pictures, man and woman in the woods, ... is a picture of life as well as of death, and of the town which rises behind the trees." Or in a paper left by him he says: "I rejoiced feeling myself die, united with or transformed into this earth that always lived, always fermented, always was warmed by the sun... I ought to be united with her. Out of my decomposing body plants and trees should grow ... 1 ought to be in them. Nothing will pass away. ... That is eternity." But the elementary parallels to the Samkhya-Vrkäyurveda idea are not limited to Western art only; they can be found also in literary works and other written documents. I have not searched for them systematically, but I think that there should be material enough for a comparative study, a contribution to cultural anthropology which could perhaps even counteract to some extent our present alienation from nature. The few examples I have chanced upon during the last years will, I hope, at least demonstrate that this assumption is not entirely unjustified, or perhaps even inspire others to follow this path further. A poem of Felix Pollak's entitled 'A Matter of History' begins thus:62
"It all has passed and is gone, the cries silenced, the blood/ congealed in the earth. The cries dissolved in air, the blood /
sucked up by grass, transformed into the sap of young trees. / In A. Watt's booklet "Nature, Man and Woman there is a foot-note which runs thus: "It is curious to speculate upon the consequences of civilized man's refusal to be eaten by other forms of life, to return his body for the fertilization of the soil from which he took it. This is a significant symptom of his alienation from nature, and may be a by no means negligible deprivation of the earth's resources." A similar idea is found expressed already in G. Th Fechner's "Nanna oder Über das Seelen
group of Puranic Texts as distinguished by W. KIRFEL) has therefore to be thus supplemented: "because these verses have been taken over from or inspired by certain Sastra texts dealing with animals and plants".
* Cr. her book: Edvard Munch - der Mensch und der Kansler, Königstein L.T. 1979, p. 123.
National Gallery of Art, Washington 1978, on cat. no. 46. My attention was kindly drawn to this article by Mrs. K. E. Lerheim, Secretary of the "Oslo kommunes kunstsamlinger'.
*Cf. R. STANG, O.C. (fn. 59). pp. 123 and 301.
" quote from: Vom Nutzen des Zweifels. Gedicht hrsg. von R. GRIMM, Frankfurt 1989, p. 48.
# Vintage Books, New York 1970, p. 105, En. 5. The text of the English original I owe to the kind assistance of Dr. H. Jamison, Harvard
