North Indian Inscriptions

PART B

in his navel, is kneeling ti let the hunter cut off his tusks with a large saw. On the right of the hunter his bow and an arrow are lying on the ground.

  Foucher wrote a special study^[1] on the Chhaddantaj. (514) and pointed out the numerous deviations to be found between the Gāthās and the prose account. Leaving aside the prose account of the story, the Bhārhut relief seems to deviate only in two points from the tale as it can be deduced from the Gāthās: the Gāthās 25 ff. tell how the elephant, struck by the arrow, rushes at the hunter to kill him, but retreats when he sees the reddish garment of the hunter which is otherwise worn by the Ṛishis; for, someone who bears the characteristic marks of the Arhats, should not be killed by the pious:

vadhissam etan ti parāmasanto
kāsāvam addakkhi dhajaṁ isīnaṁ |
dukkhena phuṭṭass’ udapādi saññā
arahaddhajo sabbhi avajjharūpo ||^[2]

   In the relief, however, the hunter does not wear the garments of a monk, but the usual lower garment and a turban. Now in fact the hunter, according to the Atthavaṇṇanā, puts on yellow garments in order to deceive the elephant and the same thing is told in the Jātaka version as it is found in the Kalpanāmaṇḍitikā and in the prose of J. 221. Nothing, however, of it is said in G. 23, where the preparations made by the hunter in order to kill the elephant are described. The disguise in itself is quite superfluous, as the hunter hides himself in a pit covered by planks in order to shoot from there his arrow at the passing elephant^[3]. Obviously the composer of the Gāthās, when he used the word kāsāva, thought of the usual dress of the hunter, which is also a red-yellow garments as can be seen from other passages. For instance, according to the legend, the Boddhisattva when he thought of leaving the worldly life exchanged his garments first with the kāshāya of the hunter. In the verse Mvu. II, 195, 6 f. it is said: tatrādrākshīd araṇyasmiṁ lubdhakaṁ kāshāyaprāvṛitaṁ; he requested him: imau kāśikau gṛihṇītvā dehi kāshāyaṁ tvaṁ mama. According to the Mvu. prose, however, he is not a usual hunter but one created by the Śuddhāvāsa gods. In the Buddhach. 6. 60 ff., and in the Lalitav. 226, 1 ff.; 238, 1 ff., where the kāshāya has already changed to several kāshāya-garments, it is likewise said that the hunter was a god who had taken the form of a Hunter^[4]. It could therefore appear, that the hunter had equipped himself with the kāshāya for this special purpose^[5]. Aśvaghosha describes the kāshāya as the dress suited for the
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^[1]Mèlanges Sylvain Lèvi, p. 231 ff.; Beginnings of Buddhist Art, p. 185 ff
^[2]The next two Gāthās (26 and 27) with which the elephant is alleged to have addressed the hunter, are certainly later additions. From the words samappito puthusallena nāgo aduṭṭhachitto luddakam ajjhabhāsi in G. 28 it can be clearly seen that the elephant has not spoken to the hunter before. Both these Gāthās belong to the Buddhist lyric poetry and as such they are found in the Dh. 9, 10. Later on, probably a story modelled on the Chhaddantaj. was inverted and in fact there is such a Jātaka, which was taken up as J. 221 in the collection, from where is found its way into DhA. (1, 80 f.). Whether the verses 967 to 970 in the Th. refer to this Jātaka or to the already interpolated Chhaddantaj. is not easy to decide. If one would relate them to the J. 221 one must suppose that originally the narrative ran more in conformity with the story of the Chhaddantaj. than the one handed down in the Atthavaṇṇanā, for the Theragāthās speak of a six-tusked elephant that was wounded, while in the J. 221 the elephant is not described as six-tusked and escapes the missile of the hunter. Finally, however, it is still more probable that the verses from the Th. refer to the Chhaddantaj. But they themselves are perhaps only a later insertion, for there they completely fall away from the context. Besides, I would like to point out that the grammatical commentary on the Gāthās 18-27 has the character of Aṭṭhakathā, for the interspersed bhikkhave 48. 13; 50.8 makes it probable that the grammatical commentary and the prose narration come from the same author.
^[3]In the relief the hunter has struck the elephant from below as the arrow is planted in its belly.
^[4]This remark is lacking in the Divy. 391, where it is said that the Bodhisattva received kāshāyāṇi vastrāṇi from the hunter for his kāśika garments; however only a short reference is made to the story.
^[5]Subsequently this legend has been further developed in this respect. In the Nidānakathā G. 273 (p. 65) the full equipment of a Buddhist monk which a Mahābrahman, the former Ghaṭikāra, provides, appears in the place of the kāshāya of the hunter.