During Navratri, and in other goddess-centric festivals such as Gauri-Puja, and Teej, women traditionally worshipped the deity as a pile of nourishing and medicinal herbs. These included banana, coconut, mango, turmeric, rice, bilva, ashoka, aparajita and jayanti. These were the original Nava-Durgas, nine forms of the goddess who feed, adorn and heal.
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But we have lost that connection with nature, with plants, as we replace these organic forms with stone, metal, plastic and plaster of Paris. This mirrors the now socially sanctioned practice of cutting down thousands of trees to make way for roads, buildings and factories, even temples, in the name of development.
No one heeds the ultrasonic frequencies outside the range of human hearing, discovered by scientists, that plants emit. We have come a long way from the days when there were sacred groves across India, where no one was allowed to graze cattle, plant crops or forage for fruit or firewood. These were the original temples of India, homes of yakshas and yakshis, now all but forgotten.
Krishna and Radha in a forest grove | Photo Credit: Wiki Commons
Harappan seals clearly indicate that plants were venerated. Their seals show men making offerings and women dancing around a goddess who emerges from a tree. We do not know what this goddess was called. Was she an early form of Shakambari, the goddess of plants?
Across the Deccan regions, archaeologists have found images of nameless goddesses, spreadeagled, as if to accept a lover or deliver a child, her head and genitals replaced by a lotus flower, offering fragrance and nectar, welcoming bees to pollinate her. A pre-Vedic goddess, she was named Lajjagauri, the modest mother, by archaeologists. No one doubts its role in ancient fertility rituals. The Bengali swastika, painted in red, resembling a woman spreadeagled, during Bengali marriage ceremonies and fertility festivals, is the only remnant of that ancient Lajjagauri.
The many metaphors
The Vedic corpus that we have today is essentially a set of hymns used in rituals meant to prepare and provide a plant-based drink called soma (ephedra, most likely) to the gods. Over 50% of Rig Vedic hymns are dedicated to these three entities: soma, Indra (to whom the drink is offered) and agni (the mouth of the gods). Of the 10 chapters of the Rig Veda, the ninth is completely dedicated to poetry that uses dozens of metaphors to describe the ritual act of squeezing soma juice from the stalks of the plant and filtering it.
Since Vedic people were pastoral, they respected grass (especially darba grass) that nourished their cows and horses. Barley cake was offered to gods and ancestors. When rice became available, rice cakes were offered. In Atharva Veda, besides grass, ephedra, barley, and rice, cannabis is mentioned.
Sacred trees
Plants play a key role even in hermit traditions. Every Jain Tirthankar is associated with a sacred tree. Mahavir is associated with a sal tree, Rishabhnath with the banyan, Vimalnath with the jamun, Aranath with mango, Mallinath with ashoka, Neminath with kokum. The list varies in different traditions but what everyone accepts is that there is at least one plant that embodies the spirit of the great Jain teachers.
Buddha too is linked to plants. His mother clings to the branch of a sal tree when she delivers him in Lumbini. He dies between two sal trees. He attains an awakened state under the peepal tree, and gives lectures in a pleasant bamboo grove.
Before Gautama Buddha, there was another Buddha, called Vipassi Buddha, who attained his awakened state below the patali tree. Around this tree grew the city of Pataliputra, the capital of the Mauryan empire, that we now know as Patna.
Heaven to earth
In ancient times, many trees served as totems of clans and royal families. In Sangam poetry, we find several references to kings who attack their rivals and uproot their tree. Nedungrel cuts the kadampu tree of the Kadambas of Banwasi. Paditruppattu says that Narmudi Cheral cut the vakai tree of his rival Nanna. Cenkuttuvan cut down the veppu tree of Palaigan of Mogur.
This links well with the story of how Krishna fought Indra and brought the parijata tree from swarga to earth. Krishna had helped Indra defeat Narakasura and lift the siege of Indra’s paradise. Indra, however, refused to let Krishna take the parijata tree to earth to please his wife, Satyabhama. To teach the ungrateful Indra a lesson, Krishna snatched it by force. The parijata tree thus represents the triumph of Krishna over Indra, king of the gods.
Hanuman lives in a grove of banana plants, Ganesha lives in a forest of sugarcane, the goddess resides in the dark grove full of neem and tamarind trees, Krishna dances in a bower of fragrant forest flowers, Shiva and Shakti sport in the deodar forest. But these forests will soon be gone, or kept as reserves, a memory of a pre-industrial era when humans were not so jaded as to see trees as nothing but raw material for their greed.
Devdutt Pattanaik is author of 50 books on mythology, art and culture.
