Madhuka (Mahua)

Madhuka in the Poetry of Vraja

In the verse of Vraja the madhuka is recalled when Radha's face is described. In the Gita-Govinda of Srila Jayadeva Gosvami there is a scene where Krishna, making peace with His angry beloved, goes over the features of Her face and finds a flower for each of them; together they make up the five arrows of Kamadeva, the god of love:

The Five Arrows from Radha's Face

Srila Bhaktivedanta Narayana Gosvami takes these five arrows one by one. Radha's cheeks, he says, have “the elegant golden-white lustre of a madhuka flower, as if nectar is just about to ooze from within” – this is the honey-coloured arrow of vashikarana, the arrow of subjugation by enchantment¹. The gold is brought into the cream-white flower by the comparison itself: as nectar ripens under the skin of the corolla, so under the softness of the cheek there hides a power that conquers the universe.

The same sweetness is taken up by Srila Rupa Gosvami in the play Lalita-Madhava. The madhuka flower is famous for its honeyed juice madhvika, and yet, Krishna says here, the bee, drunk on the fragrance of His beloved's face, goes blind to all the rest:

Worship

From the forest the madhuka comes to the chest of the Lord Himself. In the Hari-bhakti-vilasa Srila Sanatana Gosvami quotes the words of Krishna about twenty-five forest flowers that He loves as He loves the goddess Lakshmi, and out of which He Himself once wove His vanamala, the forest garland. The madhuka flower stands in that list on a par with malati, nagakeshara, kunda, kadamba and ketaki:

Beyond Vraja

Outside the poetry of Vraja the madhuka is one of the trees with which the shastras people the sacred gardens and mountains. In the Eighth Canto of the Bhagavatam, in the lila of the liberation of Gajendra, in a valley of Mount Trikuta spreads the Ritumat garden that belongs to Varuna: the trees in it flower and bear fruit in every season, and the madhuka is named there beside the tamala, the arjuna and the udumbara⁴. In the Fourth Canto the same tree grows on Kailasa, the abode of Lord Shiva – among date palms, mangoes and priyalas.

The shastras know the household fame of the madhuka as well: a thick oil is pressed from its seeds. The Hari-bhakti-vilasa, listing what one may renounce for spiritual merit, names the giving up of madhuka oil too – by it, it is said, one gains incomparable good fortune⁵. The renunciation is no accident: mahua oil was in use all over India for centuries – people cooked with it, anointed themselves with it, burned it in lamps.

Ayurveda

The nighantus, the Ayurvedic lexicons of plants, count the madhuka among the fruit trees: in the Bhavaprakasha it stands in the section of “the mango and its like”. Its taste (rasa) is sweet and astringent, its potency (virya) cooling, its post-digestive effect (vipaka) sweet.

The flowers are credited with an astringent, mildly laxative and strengthening action: with them the burning in the body is soothed and strength is restored after exhaustion. The flowers are taken for cough and cold, the bark for skin diseases, wounds and diabetes, the seed oil for rheumatism and for the skin.

Botany

The madhuka is a kinswoman of the bakula; its bark is thick and grey, cracked vertically. The tree sheds most of its leaves by the end of winter and flowers at that same time, while the new foliage unfolds only towards the end of the flowering. The flower takes one not by its look but by its make: a globular fleshy corolla about a centimetre and a half across, with a musky smell. The fallen corollas are eaten fresh and dried, sweets are cooked from them and liquor is fermented out of them. The fruit is a fleshy green berry with one to four brown seeds, from which an edible and lamp oil is pressed; for that oil the tree was nicknamed the Indian butter tree. The madhuka is native to India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka; its regional names differ: mahua in Hindi, illupei in Tamil, ippa in Telugu, maul in Bengal.