Champakali Silver Necklace

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This brilliant piece of silver ornament fabricated using primarily the identical repeats of a form resembling a bud unanimously associated with an evergreen Indian plant bearing a highly fragrant yellowish white flower called ‘Champa’, ‘Michelia campaca’ its botanical name, incorrectly identified or translated into English as ‘Jasmine’, one of the classical pan Indian designs for a necklace used since times immemorial by Indian gold and silver smiths, as also by her sculptors in the images they sculpted, is known as Champakali Har – necklace. It consists of twenty exact identical bud-forms rhythmically moving from one end to other creating the magic of pace and revealing a rare formative simplicity. Each two of the twenty ‘phalis’ are joined by a rectangular loop the face of which a die-stamped flower motif adorns. For supporting this main necklace part on the neck it has attached to it a chain in two parts, one on either side, that on the left terminating with a hook to hold the other end which terminates with a pair of tiny pots-like motifs.

Except in some late innovations seeking to introduce enameling and stone-inlay as mediums for representing the Champa-bud form affecting some minor variations the style and form of the bud and its stringing or threading has been unchanged for over centuries. Many figures in early sculptures, one of Lord Shiva as Lakulisha from the twelfth century in the Indore Museum in Madhya Pradesh, and another of Bodhisattva Maitreya in a private collection have been sculpted wearing exactly identical necklaces as this one suggesting the continuity of the form over long time and that the form of this necklace is deeply rooted into the great past. Besides these divine figures, portraits of harem inmates and Rajput nobility wearing Champakali necklaces suggest that whether the divine ornaments or the human Champakali was their essential component. A Manipuri Meithei woman, or one of Gond tribe in Madhya Pradesh, not merely for a necklace but also for a bracelet or girdle, Champakali is one of her chosen designs. An eighteenth century portrait of an English lady by an English painter Renaldi wearing an exactly alike Champakali necklace suggests the design’s popularity even among foreigners.

How or when the India’s jewellery tradition incorporated the Champa-bud form as one of its designs and when it gained its great heights is not known. Scantily growing just one or two blooming at one time, the highly fragrant, a single flower capable of charging with its fragrance a total premise, a garden or a hall, Champa was always a ‘sought-after’ flower. As against other flowers Champa was believed to be dearer to the deity and hence a preferred offering to gods, and perhaps to present to a king or any superior. Maybe, this rarity of the flower, as also its divine and royal contexts, inspired smiths working with gold or silver for adopting its form into jewellery designs. Obvious as it appears, with such deep-rooted divine links Champa was believed to have mystic powers to repel evil spirits. Medically also under Ayurveda Champa is a potent herbal drug and hence, an amulet. As such, Champa’s amuletic and mystic powers reflecting in its form and hence transferring from the plant to an ornament piece might also be responsible for its inclusion into jewellery design.

This description by Prof. P.C. Jain and Dr Daljeet. Prof. Jain specializes on the aesthetics of ancient Indian literature. Dr Daljeet is the chief curator of the Visual Arts Gallery at the National Museum of India, New Delhi. They have both collaborated on numerous books on Indian art and culture.