Flower symbolism

[Guest guest]

The flower symbolism in sangam texts seems

to be very sophisticated and subtle. The blue-black

water lily stands for the wife of the land lord ('talaivan'),

propably a cross-cousin (Cf. Trautmann, Drav. kinship).

On the opposite side, is the red lotus which denotes

prostitutes, public women etc. in internal metaphors.

The black is 'passive', and like clouds or black earth

represents fertility where the family line is carried,

Red is 'active' and enjoyment. In medieval times, devadasis

in temples were forbidden to have children. In the

South, they were not considered official descendents

of the rich.

 

While Lakshmi is lotus-lady, Sarasvati/Vac is connected

with lotuses also (Eg., padmapuranam). Sarasvati and

Durga pujas are celebrated during Vijayadasami festival.

A. Parpola connects Sarasvati/vAc/sAvitri with Durga:

VAc as a Goddess of Victory in the Veda and her

relation to Durga, Zinbun (Annals of the Institute for

Research in Humanities, Kyoto University), vol. 34 no.2

(1999) [2000], p. 101-143.

 

Durga is Indian counterpart of Inana/Ishtar.

In an essay with pictures, I try to connect the

lotus symbolism with the bull-man cult in ancient

times. It looks proto-tantra type rituals were

present then.

 

In the Indology archives, I came across a book title

that may be useful in decoding the flower symbolism

of sangam texts. I've to read V. Turner's book, The forest

of symbols Aspects of Ndembu ritual.

 

Need more references where tribes from different parts of the

world use flowers as symbols, specific to individual cultures.

 

Does not A. K. Ramanujan talk about the flower symboloism

somewhere??

 

Like Vibha Arora saying that more about India is available at Oxford,

A. K. Ramanujan discovered Tamil in Chicago.

http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/southasia/50yrs2.html

<<

An interviewer once asked Ramanujan to discuss the affinity between

his poetic sensibility and the sensibilities of the classical Tamil

poems he translated so

beautifully. He answered:

 

Look at the classical Tamil poems, their attention to experience.

These poems attracted me by their attitude to experience, to human

passion and to the external world.... Their attention to the object

is not to create the `object' of the Imagist, but the object as

enacting human experience: the scene always a part of the human scene,

the poetry of objects always a part of the human perception of self

and others.

 

This seemed to me an extraordinary way of writing poetry. I came

upon these first century poems in Chicago. I started reading them,

hesitantly, not being formally trained in classical Tamil. I was

amazed at the transparency of the poems, the sophistication of the

early commentators. And so I acquired some facility in reading them by

teaching nothing else for some time. My training as a linguist and my

experience as a native Tamil speaker surely were a help. When I

started translating them, I found that there were any number of poems

which I would have liked to have written myself. I do not translate

out of love but out of envy, out of a kind of aggression towards these

great poems. I think one translates out of a need to appropriate

someone else's creation, done better than one could ever do. The

ability to engage entirely the world of things, animals, trees and

people, attending to their particularity, making poetry out of it and

making them speak for you -- this seems to me extraordinary.

>>

 

Thanks for any ref. dealing with flower or color

symbolism/semiotics among peoples, tribes and literatures.

 

Regards,

N. Ganesan

 

 

Mon, 24 Jan 2000 23:07:30 +0100

Indology <INDOLOGY

Sender: Indology <INDOLOGY

Jan Dvorak <Jan.Dvorak

Pandanus '98: publication announcement

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-2

 

PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT

 

Vacek, Jaroslav and Knotkova-Capkova, Blanka (eds):

Pandanus '98. Flowers, Nature, Semiotics – Kavya and Sangam.

Signeta, Prague (Czech Republic), 1999.

135 x 190 mm, 180 pp., paperback.

ISBN 80-902608-1-0

 

The first PANDANUS workshop on flower and natural symbolism in the

classical Indian literatures took place in May 1998 in Prague. All

the presented papers now appear in a volume entlitled PANDANUS '98.

Flowers, Nature,

Semiotics – Kavya and Sangam. For more information about the PANDANUS

project, visit http://www.cuni.cz/ffiu/pandanus.

 

CONTENTS:

 

Preface

G. Boccali: Rain Poems and the Genesis of Kavya

J. Dvorak: Neem and Campaka in Classical Indian Literatures

B. Knotkova-Capkova: Some Remarks on Literary Analysis of the

Symbolical Patterns in Ancient Tamil Poetry

B. Kolver: Ambiguities, Polysemy, and Identifications

G. Pellegrini: Sattasai and palai poems of Ainkurunuru

J. Vacek: A Neytal Feature to Be Found in the Meghaduta?

J. Cejka: Plants in Kavya Poetry: Problems with Plant-Names

 

To get the book, you can (a) visit http://www.volny.cz/signeta and

submit an on-line order; (b) contact your bookseller. The price is EUR

12.00 (USD 12.00) incl. VAT (EUR 11.43 neto).

 

 

Jan Dvorak

[Guest guest]

Many Thanks to Ms. Vibha Arora for giving

references on flower symbolism. I'm interested in more

of flower, plant and color symbolism ref.s in India and elsewhere.

 

Vibha Arora wrote

> By the way there is lot of Lotus symbolism in Tibetan

> culture which is incidentally reverses the Indic

> culture, so I guess knowing one makes the

> understanding of the other easy...

 

S. Hodge wrote:

<<<

Not quiet sure you mean by this statement -- "reflects" for

"reverses" perhaps ? Since lotuses are not exactly common in

Tibet, it is hardly surprising that their symbolism, as with

much else, has much in common with Indian, specifically Buddhist,

antecedents.

>>>

 

on 31-oct-2000, S. Hodge:

<<

Somewhat later, and thus giving rise to the early tantric three-buddha

family scheme, one finds `Shaakyamuni flanked by Vajrapaa.ni paired

with Avalokite`svara -- one with a vajra and the other with a lotus.

The possible covert sexual symbolism here should be obvious

>>

 

Reading sangam texts, one finds that red lotus stands as a symbol

for prostitutes, and the hero's exploits with them. Hero will be

a buffalo or elephant etc. Lotus, a symbol of the sun, parallels the

Eye, and Indra VajrapANi is given 1000 eyes in classical tamil texts.

 

"aNagku uTai vaccirattOn2 Ayiram kaN Eykkum" - kali. 105:15

 

Lotus/Eye/yoni on VajrapANi can be contrasted with vajra-holding

tantra goddesses like mAmakI. Note that vajra (lightning,

thunderbolt) are routinely compared with the waist of women in CT

texts. "min2 iTai" or "min2 maruGkul" in 2000 years old tamil works.

 

Given that Lokesh Chandra writes that vajrayAna was connected with

Kanchipuram of the South in Lokesh Chandra, oDDiyANa: A new

interpretation L. Sternbach fel. vol., part I, Lucknow, 1979, and

I have seen a paper by L. Chandra who interprets that Borobudur

is a vajarayAna maNDalam. Possibly, borobudur = vihAra + pudUr

(= new settlement/village in tamil).

 

Another possible vajrayAna birthplace is KaveripaTTaNam, the old town

where the mouth of the river Kaveri. Merchants routinely went out

from K.paTTaNam towards Southeast Asia (cf. CilappatikAram,

Manimekalai epics). Sudhana, the young merchant meets the grammarian

Megha in DramiDapaTTanam in gaNDavyUhasUtram. The dramiDapaTTaNam is

called Vajrapura in GV.

 

The name "maNi-mEkhalA", the sea goddess and the daughter of the

gaNikA in buddhist epic, can be interpreted as "maNi+padmA".

Snake hood is represented in S. Indian art (cf. P. Rawson or Ajit

Mookerjee, Kundalini) and caGkam literature as yoni. There is a

consistent myth in sangam texts about snakes bearing/giving

jewels(maNi). I wonder whether the sangam era myth of "maNi in

cobra hood" is related with vajra+padma(=maNi+mEkhalA) tantram..

 

I have suggested that this Dravidian religion is told in ancient

Sanskrit. karkoTaka "gemstone giver".

 

//listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-shl/WA.EXE?A2=ind9911&L=indology&P=R17156

 

//listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-shl/WA.EXE?A2=ind9911&L=indology&P=R17553

 

maNimat:

//listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-shl/WA.EXE?A2=ind9912&L=indology&P=R9658

//listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-shl/WA.EXE?A2=ind0011&L=indology&P=R14278

(pl. add http: at the beginning of each URL address).

 

Any comments welcome,

N. Ganesan