A Tree Whose Name Means the End of Grief
The Ashoka tree carries its meaning in its name. In Sanskrit, a means without and shoka means sorrow. The tree was not named for beauty or utility. It was named for what it could take from you.Saraca asoca, the botanical name preserves almost nothing of this, is a mid-sized tree with dense, drooping clusters of orange-red flowers that deepen to crimson as they age. It grows in the shade of larger forests. It flowers in late winter and early spring, usually between February and April. Kalidasa describes it in the Ritusamhara as a tree that waits. The flowers do not open on their own schedule. They open, the text says, when a young woman presses her foot against the bark.This is not metaphor dressed as botany. It is a ritual claim about the relationship between a woman's body and the natural world, that the two are in conversation, and that the tree responds.
