Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c12.s2.t1.52

c12.s2.t1.52

The four kinds of female decorations comprised clothes, ornaments, flowery garlands and unguents, all of which were bestowed on them by heavenly trees. The idyllic land of Uttarakuru did not remain a dream but its symbolic significance extended to every home and caught popular imagination as a motif both in literature and art from earliest times right up to the classical period. The Kalpavṛkṣa and Kalpalatā were motifs of vegetable kingdom which in actual life represented the loving male and female relatives, father, mother, brother and husband. For example, the father typified the branch that gave the ornaments; the mother the bough offering fabrics; the brother the tendril yielding unguents; the female companions the off-shoots bestowing the lac dye for painting the feet; and the husband the youthful sappling bent low to offer jugs of hilarious wine. The home or the land of Uttarakuru or the Kalpavṛkṣa is the same producing all these auspicious blessings including the *Mithuna*, Man and Woman, the most auspicious symbol of them all. This, the land of Uttarakuru which was a heavenly region became mirrored as it were, in every home; that which was an idea in heaven became concrete and manifest for the life of the individual as Home or the Family (grihastha). This had been from the remote antiquity. The Indian ideal of life which no pessimistic or negative philosophy could eradicate, and naturally, therefore, the most important decorative motif on the railings and gateways of the great Stūpas of Bharhut and Sanchi is the representation of the Elysium, named Uttarakuru, a land of complete happiness with all the wealth of its Wish-fulfilling trees and creepers. It was a place of the highest bliss which was the same as the Vedic Nāka and Buddhist Sukhāvatī, both implying a heaven completely free from sorrow and wants. It was a corollary of the positive view of life almost universally held in India that both in literature and art the Kalpavriksha motifs stand so preeminent with its deep symbolical significance. It was common to the Buddhists, the Jainas and the Bhāgavatas. In Jaina literature we read of ten kinds of Kalpavrikshas—madyāṅgavriksha, turyāṅgavriksha, bhūshaṇāṅgavriksha, jyotivriksha (self-luminous tree), grihavriksha, bhājanaṅgavriksha (for utensils), dīpāṅjavriksha (producing different lights), vastrāṅgavriksha, bhojanāṅgavriksha, mālaṅga vriksha.¹