North Indian Inscriptions

PART B

common. Secondly the form avayesi, which stands for avāyesi, confirms the view that the original text of the Gāthās was composed in the dialect of Eastern India, where intervocalic à had been replaced by y^[1]. Bramano, if this is the right reading, is probably only a faulty spelling for bramhano; cf. Bramhadevo in No. B 66; Kanhilasa in No. A 63. href="partb67.html#_f tn1" name="_ftnref1" title target="_self" ^[1]

B 52 (769) ; PLATES XX, XLIII

ON the same pillar as No. A 66, now in the Indian Museum, Calcutta (P 2). Edited by Cunningham, PASB. 1874, p. 111; StBh. (1879), p. 53; 136, No. 58, and Pl. XXV and LIV; Hultzsch, ɀDMG. Vol. XL (1886), p. 68, No. 72, and Pl.; IA. Vol. XXI (1892), p. 233, No. 72; Barua-Sinha, BI. (1926), p. 101, No. 221a; Barua, Barh. Vol. II (1934), p. 158 ff., and Vol. III (1937), Pl. XCII (137); Lüders, Bhārh. (1941), p. 133.

TEXT:
yavamajhakiyaṁ jātakaṁ

TRANSLATION:
The Jataka relating to the market-towns.

   Whereas Cunningham imagined to have discovered the scene represented in the sculpture in the famous story of Upakośā and her lovers told in the Bṛihatkathāmañjarī and the Kathāsaritsāgara, Andersen in the Index to the Jātaka, p. XV, pointed out that the medallion illustrated an older version of that story which forms an episode of the Mahāummaggajātaka, No. 546 of the Pāli collection^[2]. The Jātaka deals with the adventures of the Bodhisattva in his existence as the sage Mahosadha, councillor of king Vedeha. The four envious ministers of the king attempt to supplant him. They steal some ornaments from the royal treasury and send them secretly to Amarā, the wife of the sage. Amarā, who is almost as clever as her husband, keeps an accurate account of these dealings. When the ministers accuse Mahosadha of having stolen the ornaments, the sage escapes in disguise. Amarā invites the four ministers to come to her home. When they arrive, she has them shaved, thrown into the dung-pit and finally put into rush-baskets. Then taking the ornaments with her, she has the baskets carried to the royal palace, and there in the presence of the king she reveals the truth.

  In the medallion the king is represented sitting on his throne, attended by a female chaurī-bearer and surrounded by six of his courtiers. On the right, Amarā stands accompanied by a female servant. With her right hand she points at two baskets the lids of which have been taken off, exposing the shaven heads of the ministers, while a third basket is being uncovered by a servant and a fourth still unopened is just arriving, being carried on a pole by two servants.

   The divergence of the fable from the Jātaka book with regard to the title of the Jātaka can be sufficiently accounted for from the Pāli text itself. The Mahāummaggajātaka is clearly composed of two parts, the first treating of Mahosadha’s marvellous cleverness by which he solves numerous questions and triumphs over the attempts of the four ministers to destroy him, and the second, of his victory over a hostile king by means of wonderful tunnel. The pratīka ‘pañchālo sabbasenāya’ (J. VI, p. 329) which serves as the title of the Jātaka in its
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^[1]Cf. H. Lüders, Beobachtungen über die Sprache des buddhistischen Urkanons, edited by E. Waldschmidt, Berlin 1954, § 115.
^[2]Barua’s interpretation of the sculpture is so palpably wrong that it is unnecessary to discuss it.