Kiṃśuka, or the riddle tree of the burning spring and the cooling summer

One more better-late-than-never homage to a fast-disappearing springtime, this time by way of the palāśa, kiṃśuka, Butea monosperma or Butea frondosa—a notably unscented, visually brilliant flower which brings no less tumult to springtime for all its unscentedness than Kamadeva’s 5 floral arrows. Kiṃśuka, from the Sanskrit kiṃ-yu: what is it? The name of the tree originates in an old Indian folk riddle, is the reason it’s sometimes called “the riddle tree,” and to the question it poses will Sanskrit poets, Śaiva mystics, Buddhist seekers and common cooks offer each their own compelling, creative, and in the end disarming answers.

A note on identification

A quick note on identification, first. The Abhidhanappadı̄pikā, a 12th c. Pali lexicon written by the Thera Moggallana of the Vilgammula fraternity, resident at the Jetavana Mahavihara built by king Parakramabahu I in Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka, identifies two kiṃśuka species: pāḷibhadda/ Erythrina variegata and palāśa/Butea monosperma [Liyanaratne 1994: 69]. The former, indeed, is kalyana murungai, pictured below, and often confused with palāśa for the similarly beak-like or claw-like shape of its blossoms.

Some accounts name kiṃśuka with quite-generic epithets like “red bud tree” or “flame of the forest” [which could just as easily be the gulmohar or the African tulip] or very specifically as the Judas tree [Cercis siliquastrum] which clearly is wrong.

The tree also identifies a crucial event in Indian history: the “Battle of Plassey” which instituted Robert Clive as the Governor of Bengal and started a process that led to the consolidation of British rule in India takes its name from the Bengali village “Palashi” east of the Bhagirathi and north of Kolkata, named after the palāśa. One can only imagine that the trees must have been plentiful in the region.

What the poets say

Here’s an excerpt from Kalīdāsa’s Ṛtusaṃhāram [Canto VI v. 19-20; trans. Usha Kishore] in which kiṃśuka, bracketed on either side by verses dedicated to mango blossoms, also marks the end of Śiśira [late winter] and heralds a coming vasanta [spring]:

With arching kiṃśuka groves, their scarlet spikes
swirling all around in the wind, like flickering
flames, Spring arrives, spreading his cloak over
ornate earth, clad in red like a beauteous bride.

Are they not bruised enough by parrot-beaked kiṃśuka
blooms?  Are they not burned enough by flaming
karṇikāra [Erythrina variegata] blooms that the sweet-sting of relentless
cuckoo song should smite the hearts of lovelorn youth?

Beauteous bride and bruising beak: the associations of palāśa are so mixed. For if flowers like lotus or mango are Kama’s enticements, palāśa flowers are his fingernails, says Jayadeva in the “Lalita Lavanga Ashtapadi” of the Gita Govinda [12th c.], stained red-orange from insistent, impassioned clawing:

mṛga-mada-saurabha-rabhasa-vaśaṃvada-nava-dala-māla-tamāle |
yuva-jana-hṛdaya-vidāraṇa manasija-nakha-ruci-kiṃśuka-jāle ||3|| [Cited here. Hear it sung here by Dr. Balamurali Krishna, Raga Dwijavanti; and by Pandit Raghunath Panigrahi in the Odisha Classical Music tradition, Raga Basanta]

Where the mango speaks softly of swelling love and longing, palāśa tears at heart and flesh; the flower is both nail and passionate nail marks of a Forest, all bashfulness removed by the headiness of the season, reunited with the lover that is Spring [Kalidasa in “RaghuvaMsham” v.9-13]. Where the mango is a gentle awakening, palāśa is the wounding weapon.

The rich forest exiles of the Mahabharata where Nala roams or the Pandavas find themselves are adorned with asoka, bakula, and punnaga trees [Saraca indica, Mimusops elengi, Calophyllum inophyllum, “and with streams and hillocks aswarm with birds” [Mahabharata 3(32)61.35, p. 337]–but this is also where palāśa grows, the wild and the fierce in a landscape of rich abundance. In such scenes do poets write of the kiṃśuka as at once pleasing adornment, once again “like a parrot beak” [kiṃcit śuka iva], and a kind of ceaseless burning. The kiṃśuka offers no solace to the lovelorn; rather it is a sign of their angst, like the beast that finds lost lovers and tears them apart: “The buds of the kiṃśuka trees gleam as they form curves; red from ripping apart and pinning down travelers they shine like the claws of the lion of Love”:

किंशुकक्षितिरुहां विलसन्तः कुड्मलाः कुटिलतां कलयन्तः।
पान्थवारणविदारणताम्राः कामकेसरिनिखा इव रेजुः॥

kiṃśuka-kṣitiruhāṃ vilasantaḥ kuḍmalāḥ kuṭilatāṃ kalayantaḥ |
pāntha-vāraṇa-vidāraṇa-tāmrāḥ kāma-kesari-nikhā iva rejuḥ || [v. 72, “Vasanta,” from Kashinath Sharma’s 1952 compilation, Subhāṣita ratna bhaṇḍagaram, cited here]

Then, when Vali and Sugriva battle in the Ramayana, or when Rama and Lakshmana face Indrajit’s arrows, their lacerated bodies become like flowering kiṃśukas: “Dripping with blood, lacerated by nails and teeth, the heroes appeared like flowering kiṃśuka trees” [Mahabharata 3(42)264.30; p. 739]. Similarly, the Danavas: “in their ornaments of gold plates, earrings, and upper-arm bracelets, they shone prettily as they lay dead like flowering kiṃśukas” [3(33)103.10; p. 423]. Palāśa is at once adornment and wounding weapon, the woman’s beautiful nails and her passionate scratches; palāśa is the wound, palāśa is the forest in flame, palāśa is the embodiment of love in separation.

What the mystics say

There are other, less conflicted associations. The Netratantra (नेत्रतन्त्र) of Kṣemarāja–a 9th c. Śaiva Tantra text that consists of a dialogue between Śiva (as Bhairava) and Pārvatī, in which the former instructs the latter on metaphysics, cosmology and theology–prescribes meditation on the form of Bhairava visualised as white as snow, jasmine, the moon and quartz; who burns like the flowers of sacred kiṃśuka and is red as a thousand suns and the red lotus; whose radiance is that of haritala or orpiment:

“One should always worship [in times of] peace and prosperity, to suppress sickness and vice, [which are] the root cause of wasting away, [and] for the protection of cows, brahmins, and men. One meditates on [Bhairava] as having equal radiance to snow [hima], jasmine [kunda], the moon [indu], or pearls. [He is] as clear as the curved moon and similar to immovable quartz [sphatikam]. [He is] clear like the burning of the end of time [kalpāntadahana], resembles a flower on the sacred tree [the sacred kiṃśuka: japā-kiṃśuka-saṃnibha], appears red like innumerable suns [surya koti] or, rather, red like a lotus [padma]. [He is] equal in radiance to yellow orpiment [haritala] …”

[…] gobrahmaṇeṣu rakṣārthaṃ śāntau puṣṭau sadā yajet |
athavā himakundendumuktāphalasamadyutim || 12 ||
candrakoṭisamaprakhyaṃ sphaṭikācalasaṃnibham |
kalpāntadahanaprakhyaṃ japākiṃśukasaṃnibham || 13 ||
sūryakoṭisamākāraṃ raktaṃ vā tamanusmaret |
athavā padmarāgābhaṃ haritālasamadyutim || 14 || [trans. Patricia Sauthoff, 2002: 55 and fn. 104: p.160]

Śiva is a flower on the sacred kiṃśuka tree but then palāśa is also a sign of Vasanta, the distracting springtime that is Kāma’s co-conspirator, spreading splendor “in accord with the inclination of the lord.” “[R]esembling the hue of twilight … shaped like the crescent moon [palāśa] shone like the flowery arrows of Kama at the feet of trees.” [Śivapurāṇa, trans. J.L. Shastri, 21.29, 32; p. 371].

A certain ambivalence invariably returns, however. When Sati complains to Śiva in the Śivapurāṇa she notes both kiṃśuka’s splendor and its notable absence of scent, as though the former surely cannot belong to a flower that does not possess the latter: “Unrivalled splendour has resorted to the kiṃśuka flowers devoid of odour, as LaksmI (the Goddess of fortune) abandons good people and resorts to the crooked, whether of high or low birth” [trans. J.L. Shastri, 22.13, p. 374].

But the odorless kiṃśuka has color and shape vying to lay the terms for meaning and marrying inevitably in curved fingernail metaphors. In the Śivapurāṇa, Brahma speaks of Kama’s love for his own “auspicious wife,” whose face is like the moon, whose breasts are like lotus buds, whose breath is sweeter than the Malaya breeze, and whose “red hands with nails like kiṃśuka flowers [were] with well-rounded tapering’ fingers…” such that the God of Love is pierced by his own arrows [Śivapurāṇa 4.21].

What the seekers say

Buddhist texts make a few references to the palāśa or kiṃsuka, prominently in the Kiṃsukopama Jātaka (No. 248) and the Kiṁsukôpama Sutta, which both tell versions of the same story with similar import, in response to a similar question:

“There is only one Nirvana for all [the] modes of meditation; how is it that all of them lead to sainthood?”

The Master responds with this question: “Is not this like the people who saw the kiṃsuka?” and tells this next story, which probably has a counterpart in pre-Buddhist Indian tradition from which the “riddle tree” got the name kiṃsuka: what is it?

The four sons of Brahmadatta, King of Benaras, a rebirth of the Bodhisattva, called the King’s charioteer desiring to see the kiṃsuka tree. The charioteer took the sons to the forest at different times: the eldest when the buds were just sprouting from the stem, the second when the leaves were green, the third at the time of blossoming, and the youngest when the tree was bearing fruit. Each son had thus a different understanding of the tree. “It’s like a a burnt stump!” said the first, “It’s like a banyan,” said the second, “It’s a piece of meat!” said the third and the youngest: “It’s like the acacia!” Vexed at these variations, the sons went to their father the King who replied with this rhyme:

“All have seen the palāśa tree–
What is your perplexity?
No one asked the charioteer
What its form the livelong year!” [adapted/quoted from Cowell et al., 1895: 184-185]

The third son’s likening of blooming kiṃsuka flowers to meat is itself a different and complex point of instruction on the recognition of things foul, or just a humorous story:

“There was a jackal chanced to see
A flowering kiṃsuka in a wood;
In haste he went to where it stood:
I have found a meat-bearing tree!”
He chewed the blooms that fell, but could,
Of course, find nothing fit to eat;
He took it thus: “Unlike the meat
There on the tree, this is no good”
[from the Visuddhimagga of Buddhaghosa, trans. Bhikkhu Ñáóamoli 1975: 2.92]

And even in this, the analogy returns to palāśa’s wounding and almost violent associations, its carnivorous tendencies for the meaning of “palāśa” is “carnivorous”: the curved shape of the flowers is the parrot beak “pecking at the rosy interior of cracked pomegranates …[as though at] the bleeding heart of a maiden separated from her lover”; or, even more disturbingly, the crescent-shaped arrow of Kamadeva, with its stalk a portion of a liver attached to red flesh as the palāśa eats away at the flesh of pining lovers” [Naiṣadhacarita of Śrīharṣa, trans. K.K. Handiqui, 1956: 84/p.10].

What the common cooks say–or, disarming the kiṃśuka

So the “claw” of this flower is its most noted feature in Sanskrit literary and soteriological texts and that’s typically its standard petal, folded, menacingly curved, hiding a stamen filament that “vies with the crescent moon [and] shines like the lac-smeared bow of the bodiless god of love concealed within a red sheath”:

किंशुककलिकान्तर्गतमिन्दुकलास्पर्धिकेसरं भाति।
रक्तनिचोलकपिहितं धनुरिव जतुमुद्रितं वितनोः॥

kiṃśuka-kalika-antar-gatam indukalā-spardhi-kesaraṃ bhāti |
rakta-nicolaka-pihitaṃ dhanur iva jatu-mudritaṃ vitanoḥ || [v. 11, “Vasanta,” from Kashinath Sharma’s 1952 compilation, Subhāṣita ratna bhaṇḍagaram; Cited here. Palāśa is a host for the Kerria lacca “lac bug,” a source of natural lac].

Yet the poets always speak of the standard petal’s menacing curvature; they never tell of the hidden claws of palāśa that show themselves only when you pull apart the standard petal–as though the flower’s own talons were always only turned upon itself.

Nor do they say anything of the leaves of the kiṃśuka in their tripattraka or trifoliate form, their use as natural and disposable plates in all the areas where the tree grows, and the associations of the use of these “plates” with health and well-being. Nor anything of the word for palāśa in Gujarati: kesudo, but also khakara, khakda, khakhado, indicating that these leaves set standards for the ideal thinness and crispness of the best of Gujarati khakaras [my thanks to Sheetal Bhatt for the insight].

Finally, the poets remark not at all on the flower’s cooling properties, in bath water and sharbats alike. For all the palāśa’s fiery passion, on you and in you it is a disarmed luminous yellow, a soothing salve–even a promise to see you [counterintuitively] from a fiery spring into a cooling summer.

It’s as though by picking the flower apart and adding to it little pinches of saunf-salt-sugar, the weapon is entirely disarmed. Kama’s nails come to be filed by mage manicurists and palāśa regains a more conventional floral touch.

Sources Consulted

Babbitt, Ellen C. n.d. More Jataka Tales. London: D. Appleton-Century Company

Cowell, E. B. (ed.). Chalmers, Robert, W. H. D. Rouse, H. T. Francis, R. A. Neil, E. B. Cowell, trans. 1895. The Jātaka or Stories of the Buddha’s Former Births vol. II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bhikkhu Ñáóamoli, trans. 1975. Visuddhimagga/Path of Purification of Bhadantácariya Buddhaghosa. Buddhist Publication Society.

Handiqui, K.K., trans.1956. Naiṣadhacarita of Śrīharṣa. Deccan Monograph Series. Poona: Deccan College/Munshi Ram Manoharlal.

Liyanaratne, Jinadasa. 1994. “South Asian flora as reflected in the Abhidhanappadı̄pikā.” Journal of the Pali Text Society. Vol. 20: 43-161

Sauthoff, Patricia. 2022. Illness and Immortality: Mantra, Mandala, and Meditation in the Netra Tantra. London: Oxford University Press

Shastri, J.L. trans. 1950. Śivapurāṇa. New Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass.

Sharma, Kashinath, 1952. Subhāṣita ratna bhaṇḍagaram/ सुभाषितरत्नभाण्डागारः/Wisdom Sayings. Nirnaya Sagar Press, “enlarged and re-edited with sources etc.” by Nārāyaṇa Rāma Ācārya

Bhikkhu, Thanissaro. trans. 1998. Kimsuka Sutta: The Riddle Tree 

van Buitenen, J.A.B. trans. 1975. Mahabharata Books 2 & 3. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.