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PART B
forest (vanyaṁ vāsaḥ) although he makes the hunter say that when he goes hunting he is
accustomed to put on kāshāya in order to produce from a distance trust in the mind of the
deer (ārād anena viśvāsya mṛigān nihanmi). In the prose of the Chandakinnaraj. (IV, 283, 16)
it is also mentioned, without giving any special cause, that the king of Benares when he
went hunting put on two kāsāyāni, and it is not necessary to imagine the kāshāya of the
hunter as the robe of a Buddhist monk. The kāshāya which, according to the prose
of the Jātakas, is worn by the executioner[1], and according to the Āśvalāyana Gṛihyas, 1, 19, 11 by the young Brahmin students, will have been scarcely different from the kāshāya
of the hunter. Therefore in this respect it is not necessary to suppose that the sculptor of
Bhārhut has deviated from the story as it is given by the Gathas.
The matter seems to be different with regard to the second deviation on which Foucher
lays much stress. In the relief the hunter cuts the teeth of the elephant with a saw, exactly
as on the medallion from Amarāvatī, on a fresco at Ajaṇṭā, and a freeze from Gandhāra.
According to the Gāthās he uses a khura for this purpose. In G. 31 the elephant says to
the hunter: uṭṭhehi tvaṁ ludda khuraṁ gahetvā dante ime chhinda purā marāmi, and accordingly
in the narrative Gāthā 32 we read utthāya so luddo khuraṁ gahetvā chhetvāna dantāni gajuttamassa. In the prose the instrument used is a kakacha, a saw (V, 52, 12 f.), and accordingly in the
grammatical commentary of G. 31 khuraṁ is also explained by kakachaṁ. Foucher is of the
opinion that the commentator goes too far when he wants us to believe that knives are saws,
‘autrement dit que les vessies sont des lanternes’. Now indeed I am also inclined to see
in the commentator a man who generally is not very much worried by scruples, whether in
linguistic or in material questions. Nevertheless some doubts may have come to him, as perhaps also to others, whether it is possible to cut elephant-teeth with a razor─this undoubtedly is
the meaning of khura. In this case, however, I believe that he is not to be blamed for he
merely became the victim of a corruption of the text. In other cases in the Gāthās where
we hear of the cutting of elephant’s tusks the instrument used is called khara. In J. 545,
10 it is said achchhechchhi kaṁkhaṁ vichikichchhitāni chundo yathā nāgadantaṁ kharena, ‘you have
cut off doubts and hesitations like a chunda[2] an elephant tooth with the khara’. In J. 234,1
Asitābhū says to her husband who has faithlessly left her that her love for him has vanished: so’ yam appaṭisandhiko kharachchhinnaṁ[3] va rerukaṁ ‘it is not again to be joined together as an
elephant-tooth[4] cut by a khara’. The commentator explains khara in both places as kakacha ‘saw’ and although the word is missing in Sanskrit we do not have any reason to doubt the
correctness of his explanation, particularly because the Abhidhānappadīpikā 967 also gives
the meaning ‘saw’ for khara. Therefore the supposition lies at hand that also in the Chhaddantaj. khuraṁ has been corrupted from kharaṁ, which is more rare, and in fact the Burmese
manuscript reads kharaṁ at all places. On account of this I am quite sure that even according to the Gāthās the instrument used by the hunter was a saw as well as in the other
representations mentioned above, and that the Gāthās therefore do not reflect, as Foucher
supposes, a version of the story older than the Bhārhut relief.
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J. III, 41, 2; 179, 1.
According to the context chunda seems to be a worker in ivory. The commentary explains the word
by dantakāra. There must have been, however, a difference between the chundas and the dantakāras for in the list of craftsmen in Mil. 331 both appear separately: the chundas are places between the kappakas (barbers), and nahāpakas (bath attendants) on one side and the mālākāras (garland-makers), suvaṇṇakāras (goldsmiths), sajjhakāras (silversmiths) etc. on the other, whereas the dantakāras appear between the chammakāras (leather-workers), and rathakāras (chariot-markers) on the one side and the rajjukāras (rope-makers) and the kochechhakāras (comb-makers) on the other. Chunda is probably the general expression for ‘turner’ and is the same as chundakāra which in J. VI, 339, 12 certainly designates a turner.
Thus we have to read instead of kharā chhinnam.
This is the meaning of the word reruka according to the commentary.
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