About this motif, it might be helpful to know what others have thought.
This is taken from a post I wrote on the research blog back in November 2011. I hope the details are correct.
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Dana Scot mentioned that the plant shown lower right on fol. 99v has a leaf resembling the form of an elephant. .
Independently, and very recently (in 2011), 'Don' [Hoffmann] suggested the same.
At first I too thought leaf-margins of this sort were only on Alocasia gageana but that isn't so.
A. esclulenta does, and the same plant is in some sources called Colocasia esculenta, said to be the 14th most widely consumed vegetable in the world.
A. macrohrizzos is a medicinal plant.
Alocasia gageana is also known as the 'dwarf elephant ear'.
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But in the end, I concluded that it wasn't meant for an elephant, but for the sort of elephant 'dress' seen especially at the Holi festival, and even more especially in Rajasthan at that time. It's still celebrated, and is an occasion on which enormous amounts of money might be made by people selling fabrics and vegetable dyes. A real "red letter" day in more senses than one.
Other festivals are noted in the botanical section, it seems to me, including the Jewish Sukkoth, though evidently another plant had to be substituted for the medical citron - perhaps an indication of where these botanical folios were used.
Cheers.
The word for an elephant's saddle-cloth is romanised as "Jhools".
This is taken from a post I wrote on the research blog back in November 2011. I hope the details are correct.
-----------------
Dana Scot mentioned that the plant shown lower right on fol. 99v has a leaf resembling the form of an elephant. .
Independently, and very recently (in 2011), 'Don' [Hoffmann] suggested the same.
At first I too thought leaf-margins of this sort were only on Alocasia gageana but that isn't so.
A. esclulenta does, and the same plant is in some sources called Colocasia esculenta, said to be the 14th most widely consumed vegetable in the world.
A. macrohrizzos is a medicinal plant.
Alocasia gageana is also known as the 'dwarf elephant ear'.
----------
But in the end, I concluded that it wasn't meant for an elephant, but for the sort of elephant 'dress' seen especially at the Holi festival, and even more especially in Rajasthan at that time. It's still celebrated, and is an occasion on which enormous amounts of money might be made by people selling fabrics and vegetable dyes. A real "red letter" day in more senses than one.
Other festivals are noted in the botanical section, it seems to me, including the Jewish Sukkoth, though evidently another plant had to be substituted for the medical citron - perhaps an indication of where these botanical folios were used.
Cheers.
The word for an elephant's saddle-cloth is romanised as "Jhools".