Random Meditations Through Her 1000 Names (XIII): The Fragrant Universe

Read part twelve here.

Champacashoca-punnaga-saugandhik-lasatkachaa- Her hair is adorned with champaca, ashoca, punnaga, and saugandhika flowers.

In the last name of the Goddess, we saw her emanating the dawn light in whose effulgence get immersed all the universes.

Then starts the description of the Goddess.

The Goddess emerges from the fire pit of Consciousness. As she emerges, the dawn light is seen first, which itself engulfs and permeates all existence.

Then come the hair. The description is from the hair to the feet.

Initially, as we see the hair, we notice that it is adorned with four different flowers.

They are: champaca (Magnolia champaca), asoca (Saraca asoca), punnaga (Calophyllum inophyllum), saugandhika (Nymphaea stellata). Also implicit in the name is the suggestion that these flowers derive their own beauty from adoring the hair of the Goddess.

The choice of flowers here is interesting. One is a tree. One is a solitary inflorescence, and another flowers as a bunch. Each is of a different colour. Three are terrestrial. One is an aquatic flower.

The variety gathered in these small group of four flowers is astonishing. The emphasis is on what we may today call diversity or pluralism.

The flowers assume spiritual significance in a very functional way in Hindu tradition as perhaps in no other.

Perhaps it is the only continuous civilisation that has associated such a variety of flowers with the divine. In recent times, it was the Mother (born Mira Alfassa), follower of Sri Aurobindo, who re-emphasised the spiritual significance of the flowers strongly.

Here is what the Mother had to say about the champaca flower. The general principle of what she says about floral symbolism is common to the human perception of all plants:

The flowers which manifest an inherent beauty for human perception also represent the reproductive capacity of the plant life. Though rooted and stationary, they attract the bees and they in turn compensate for the rootedness of the plants by effecting cross-pollination. Flowers are thus vital nodes in the vast dance of biological evolution.

Perhaps the flowers, by creating in human perception movements pregnant with spiritual significance, also make human beings their instruments - just as they bring in bees for cross-pollination.

The four flowers, so different in their colour, inflorescence, habitat nevertheless show a common character—they are all fragrant.

But here, Brahma Sri Ananthakrishna Sastry, who translated Bhaskara Raya’s commentary into English states:

The reference here is to the verse attributed to Shiva, who wrote asking the bee if it knows any fragrance which is superior to the fragrance of the locks of his beloved.

The song speaks of the love-intoxicated perception of a human lover which the particular context of the poem positions as superior to the more empirical realisation that women have no natural fragrance in their hair-locks.

The verse is considered in traditional Tamil literary discourse as describing Shiva who is making Nakeeran, a famous poet, realise that in poetry the poetic reality takes precedence over the empirical reality.

However, here, Ananthakrishna Sastry brings that verse to mean the Goddess herself who is the beloved of Shiva.

So, the literary verse becomes a mystic poem.

The Goddess possesses the natural fragrance from which all fragrances are born. The flowers acquire their fragrance from the Goddess.

We realise that the Goddess is the consciousness substratum of all existence.

As the previous name indicates, her early dawn effulgence permeates all the universes. That effulgence is merely the dawn light as she emerges. And then, everything we perceive as beauty in all its variety is signified by the flowers which derive their beauty because they are on her hair. And our experiences of all fragrance emanate from Her.

It is not that the flowers are beautiful and fragrant and hence they adorn her hair locks. On the contrary anything that adorns her hair locks become beautiful and fragrant. And the flowers are all that one perceives as beautiful and pleasant in the world.

Thus starts the description of the mystic and indescribably beautiful form of the Goddess in Sri Lalita Sahasranama.