Speaking of gifts and wishes, it is difficult to imagine a more apposite motif than the tree, a universal symbol of generous gift-giving and wish-fulfilment in world cultures. Among its earliest, endearing visualisations in Indian art is the sculpture of the treasure-laden, ‘wish-fulfilling’ tree from Besnagar, Vidisha, in Madhya Pradesh (photo). It is now a prized possession of the Indian Museum in Kolkata.
This unique stone sculpture of the beneficent tree, about 2,200 years old, was rediscovered during archaeological excavations conducted by Alexander Cunningham in the last quarter of the 19th century. It portrays a grand Indian banyan tree protected by a two-tiered enclosure – a square base topped by a circular fence with a wicker-basket pattern – that reveals ancient building practices in wood and grass. The enclosure marks sacred space in much the same way as fenced open shrines were built around sacred bodhi trees adorned with garlands and adored by worshippers.
What makes our tree truly special are the distinctive nidhis, or treasures, it bears, configured in eight sections separated by hanging roots along its expansive, circular trunk. One observes bags filled to the brim and tied at their mouths with ropes hung from the tree’s lower branches, pots overflowing with square- and circular-shaped period coins, and most significantly, the precious lotus-treasure (padma-nidhi) and conch-treasure (shankha-nidhi) that are seen abundantly here onwards in the visual arts of ancient and medieval India.
These special treasures give the 5 ft 8 inches tall tree the characteristics of a mythical kalpavriksh or kalpadrum (wish-fulfilling tree) encountered in ancient Indian literature. The Parijat tree, too, which emerged from the mythical churning of the ocean – samudra manthan -was claimed and reclaimed by Indra in heaven and Krishna on Earth for its wish-granting bounties. There are other splendid descriptions of gift-giving trees in folklore and in classical Indian poetry and prose.
But to return to the lotus-treasure and conch-treasure, so exquisitely carved on our altruistic tree. In this instance, these two chief treasures of Kuber, the god of wealth, are shown in their ‘natural’ state – as a lotus and a conch -both loaded with innumerable coins that are spilling over.In the centuries to follow, the portrayal of the shankha-nidhi and padma-nidhi in Indian sculpture undergoes a process of personification, best noticed in the beautiful 3rd century CE versions that belong to the site of Nagarjunakonda in Andhra Pradesh (photo).Personified as pot-bellied, prosperous dwarf figures, the Nagarjunakonda nidhi-duo have transformed into shankha- and padma-purushas. Their iconographic markers, conch and lotus, now crown their heads symbolically as they hold aloft a fountain of coins that flow from the infinite treasure-troves placed above their heads.
Such personifications of different attributes became a recurring feature in Indian visual art practice from about the 4th-5th centuries, the period of Gupta and Vakataka rule in parts of northern India and the Deccan. Here onwards, as at the Virupaksha-Pattadakal built during the time of the early Western Chalukya rulers of the Deccan, for example, the symbolism is further abridged and the nidhi-purushas merely bear the treasures in their hands.
Such images heralding auspiciousness and material wealth were drawn from popular beliefs and found their place in more organised religious iconographies, blurring boundaries between symbols of material and spiritual well-being. Beyond its material treasures, the Besnagar banyan tree appears to spread its roots and branches in an infinite cycle of giving and regeneration – leading us to recall the ultimate, self-sacrificing generosity that the tree embodies.
