61 pages • 2-hour read
The Jasmine Throne
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Symbols & Motifs
Fire
Content Warning: This section discusses colonial and sexist violence and discrimination and the killing of children.
Fire and burning are a motif in the novel representing The Corrupting Influence of Power and The Destructive Nature of Colonialism. The Parijati religion reveres the martyred mothers, who were burned to stop Ahiranya from its expansion in the Age of Flowers. In the present, Chandra immolates people as a tool of control and purification. The image of Ahiranyi women being burned in the city becomes a symbol of imperial violence, and the method of execution is a ritualistic assertion of power.
For Malini, who narrowly escapes being burned at the start of the novel, the fire becomes a symbol of the oppressive patriarchal system that she is determined to overthrow. However, as Malini’s ambition grows, she grows to embrace the fire. Her decision to set the lacquer gardens ablaze, sacrificing the priests of the nameless god and Chandra’s soldiers alike in the process, demonstrates her readiness to use ruthless measures to achieve her goals. Burning the monastery is not just a tactical maneuver; it shows her willingness to embrace the destructive aspects of power to carve out a path to the throne. By taking ownership of the fire that was meant to consume her, Malini uses it to assert her claim to the throne. However, she sacrifices her ideals in the process and becomes complicit in the same violence that her brother Chandra wields.
While the Parijati narrative in the novel deals with literal fire, the Ahiranyi characters liken power to the sensation of burning, too. For instance, the sacred wood that the rebels use for their weapons burns those it comes into contact with, and when Meena wears the crown mask to gain more power during her fight with Priya, it melts the flesh from her face. These instances highlight the dangerous nature of power, showing that it can harm even those who wield it.
Water
In The Jasmine Throne, water symbolizes the connection between people. For example, two major scenes of intimacy and vulnerability between Priya and Malini—the bath and the waterfall—occur in water. The deathless waters and the sangam, too, are connected to The Complicated Nature of Family Bonds. By passing through the deathless waters and becoming once-, twice-, or thrice-born, the temple children gain a spiritual connection to one another that connects them through the sangam, regardless of their physical distance. In this case, family comes to mean a shared history and collective identity. As a confluence of rivers, the sangam represents the intertwined fates of the characters who are connected to it.
While water is the opposite of fire in the novel since it connects rather than separates, it similarly represents The Corrupting Influence of Power. The deathless waters erode the humanity of those who enter it, forcing them to carve out parts of themselves to make space for the yaksa’s power. A human being cannot wield that kind of power, so to embrace the waters is to become something other than human. This act of hollowing out reflects the corrupting nature of power—what is gained is not freely given, and in order to attain strength, individuals must lose or compromise integral parts of themselves.
The Rot
The rot—an affliction that causes plants and people to become overgrown with vegetation—is a symbolic manifestation of the suffering in Ahiranya due to The Destructive Nature of Colonialism. Just as the rot spreads and makes the land uninhabitable, colonialism spreads its own kind of blight by devastating the local economy, disrupting traditional ways of life, and leaving long-lasting scars on the land and its people. Ahiranya, once a land of beauty and abundance, is now a shadow of its former self, struggling to survive under the weight of Parijati domination. The disease disproportionately affects the poor, and the rot’s symptoms mark those afflicted as outcasts and render them invisible to society.
The rot further ties into the loss of cultural identity by its linkage to the temple children. The children were massacred because the elders believed that they were the source of the rot, but their deaths only led to the further destruction of Ahiranyi culture. The elders’ involvement in the deaths stemmed from their failure to recognize the potential for a cure within these “cursed” children. Therefore, Priya’s decision at the end of the novel to focus on eradicating the rot carries symbolic weight. By declaring her intention to destroy it, she is committing to not only healing the physical affliction but also combating the deeper problems that weakened her land.
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