Setubandha

Author(s): Krishnakant Handiqui
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 87

INTRODUCTION While the sylvan deities fled from the creepers in fear when a mountain was violently uprooted, even their fresh blossoms dropped, and the young shoots withered, even though the stems were unhurt. 6.52.
While the mountains, their home, were carried away, the hinds started to run, but turned back, distraught with fear; and the woods were charming when they turned round and looked up in bewilderment for a while. 6.80.
The plight of the animals on the disturbed mountains often adds to the interest of the description. We have pictures of elephants worn out with fatigue (6.61); cow elephants weeping for the missing leader of the herd (6.68); buffaloes disappearing as they turn round in a whirlpool (7.23); and deer carried away by the waves, meeting and parting again (7.24). Another verse (7,50) depicts a herd of elephants in a whirlpool, trunks raised, and holding up a distressed cub, while the leader of the herd keeps a prowling sea lion off. There is also a reference to elephants, half submerged in the waters, tearing the serpents clinging to their feet, like ropes, stretching and pulling them with their trunks (8.48). Motifs similar to those in the last two verses are found in a painting in Ajanta Cave X, in which a python coiling round the trunk of a tree is shown as having caught one of the hind legs of an elephant ; while several other elephants with their trunks raised are seen coming to rescue their companion.' Similarly, the Setu verse 9.23 describes the encounter of an elephant with a tiger, in which the tiger, pierced and tossed by the elephant's tusks, pounces on the latter's temples. Usually the lion is represented as the enemy of the elephant, and references to the tiger in this connection appear to be rare in Kavya poetry. A sculptured frieze in a corridor of the upper story of Ajantā Cave VI has, however, some animated figures of elephants, one of whom is shown as killing a tiger.2
1 2
Yazdani, Ajanta, Part II1, p. 33. Text. Ibid., p.6.