Peony and its many stories

The name Peony stirs up my earliest memories. There used to be a dachshund at home  named Peony –  a sweet sounding name given by Ma with her penchant for choosing unusual names for both her two legged and four legged family members.  I have no recollection of the little pet nor any picture of her but Peony lingered in the many stories we heard about her, Chhotu a bigger mixed- breed dog and our house.

Set in the sprawling cantonment of Jabalpur in Central India, where my father was posted between 1959 and 1962, the house was believed to have held many secrets, scandals and shadows; it continued to be quite a talking point in the family long after we moved away.¹

The dogs had to be left behind when we relocated to Delhi but the name Peony came with us-etched in our family’s collective memory.

 

The Story behind the Name:

Where did Ma come upon the name? Daddy was a keen gardener and there was quite a large patch in the house in Jabalpur where all kinds of vegetables, fruits and flowers grew. But the hot weather of Madhya Pradesh would not have permitted peonies to bloom.

So where did the name come from if not from the garden? Well it had to be from the book.

Ma was an avid reader and Pearl S. Buck was among her favourite authors. Buck’s novel  Peony, was first published in 1948 by John Day Company in New York. The publishing house had been founded by Richard J. Walsh in 1926 and named after a 16th century Protestant printer of Elizabethan England. Richard Walsh was also the editor and second husband of Pearl S Buck, the daughter of an American Baptist missionary herself. An impressive list  of thinkers and writers were associated with John Day Company, including Albert Einstein, Peter Drucker, Jawaharlal Nehru, Leon Trosky, and Lin Yutang.

Ma must have read Peony some time between the time when the book was published and traveled  to reach bookstores and libraries in India. I don’t remember seeing the book at home nor reading it.  The Good Earth, much like War and Peace, was a compulsory text  in our family.

The Story of the Flower:

Life moved on.   I grew up, and grew older and circumstances changed dramatically. My husband and I frequently visited Moscow, he on work and I to make new friends and collect stories for my Blog. On one of the trips in 2018, a friend took me on a long walk through Gorky Park. We had been to Moscow before  between 1991 and 1997. The politics now had changed beyond recognition and Gorky Park was its visible proof!

The tall figure of Stalin stood with its nose battered, a sign of anger and resentment he aroused. Next to this installation were cage-like boxes, filled with stone  human heads  representing thousands of lives and identities lost during the Stalinist era.

These installations, grim reminders of history, were in a beautifully manicured park, so distinctive of Russian aesthetics. And here I encountered the stunning spectacle of a flower bed lined with white peonies.

When we returned  home to England, we planted two peonies. They took their time but when they finally bloomed, their beauty took our breath away. As I waited for the buds to burst into colours, I found myself reflecting on my earliest memory of peony and thinking of Ma.

 

The Story of Peony:  

A brief search revealed that the name Peony has roots in Greek mythology,  possibly derived from Paean, the Greek physician of the Gods, connected with healing and cure. In Greek, it simply means flower but the intensity of its beauty and the lingering presence, turned it into a symbol of wealth, well-being and romance.

In the Chinese tradition, peonies commonly known as mudan,  frequently appeared in art and literature. Often referred to as King of Flowers, mudans  signified wealth and honour.  masculinity as well as feminine beauty. Their grandeur lends them something of an androgynous quality, embodying both strength and grace.

The Story in the Book:

This brought me back to wondering why Ma chose the name Peony for the little dachshund?  Was it because she had recently read Buck’s novel? Which edition did she have — a hardbound first edition or a softcover?

It’s too late now to ask her.

So, I  decided to read the book myself. New copies were not available but my daughter found a used one, the 8th edition, published in 2008 by Moyer Bell in New York, John Day and Company having long wound up operations in 1968.

Peony is about a Chinese bond girl who was sold to a Jewish family  in Kaifeng, a city about 650 km south of Peking (now Beijing) where there was quite a cluster of Jews who traced back their lineage to the 12th century. There were supposed to have been 17 Jewish clans that migrated here. Despite following their Jewish customs and rituals -they were even presented with a Torah scroll – the Kaifeng Jews lived among the Chinese, adapting many of their practices and assimilating with their culture. Cohabitation and intermarriage between Jewish men and Chinese women were not uncommon, often to strengthen trade and commercial alliances.

The novel is set in what seems to be the 19th century, though as scholar Wendy R. Abraham who writes the Afterword in this edition points out that Buck took  some literary licences with events and timelines. Peony grows up to become a beautiful woman who takes charge of the Jewish family with her intelligence, dedication and love, never overstepping her boundaries. She is present from the start to the finish of the story, an epitome of perfection while  everything around her crumbles down.  The Jewish community fades away, the synagogue is in ruins, and all that is left are some stone carvings that a Christian Bishop finally comes to acquire and preserve in a church. This last bit is historically correct.

As I read the story, I wondered why Buck had given the heroine a non Chinese name which she never did in her other books. Perhaps because she is portrayed as one who embodied all the qualities that the flower is supposed to have  in Chinese mythology,  a woman who was pristine, pure and perfect.

The Story that Continues:

The peonies in our garden continue to bloom year after year, their beauty as unmatched as the flowerbeds I saw in Moscow -like the memory of Ma teaching me to read and to love Bengali and English literature.  Peony is more than a flower, a name or a book. It is a thread that connects my past and the present,  with memories, discoveries and the intense pain of loss.

1. Urmi, my sister has written about our experience in Jabalpur in//www.pastconnect.net/ghosts-in-the-house/