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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
PART B same name as the ascetic in other cases he is supposed to be the king of Kaliṅga. I have no doubt that the Kaliṅgarājā in the stanza replaced the original kapālayogī (No. 3)or kapālabhikshuḥ (No. 5). Now, as it is highly improbable that the villagers kill their own king, the popular motif of the horse running away to a distant place has been brought into it. So it can be supposed that the king comes to a place where he is not known.
The narrations Nos. 1-4 oppose in ones point the Southern ones, Nos. 5-7, which are
closely related to each other: In Nos. 1-4, the ascetic or the king brings himself to calamity
against his own will, in Nos. 5-7, however, he chooses death willingly. Hertel is of the
opinion that the motif of self-sacrifice done willingly is the original, because in the opening
stanza of Nos. 2, 3, 5, it is mentioned that the ascetic or the king entered the gap (vivaraṁ or
bilaṁ pravishṭaḥ) and was not made to enter it (praveśitaḥ). To me, however, it seems that pravishṭaḥ, if required by the context of the story, can be understood also an enforced
entering into the earth-hole. This in fact is the case in Nos. 2 and 3. Now the stanza
shows as clearly as possible that ‘silence is gold’ is the moral of the story. The ascetic or the
king brings death upon himself because in giving an advice he does not show regard to
it. He, who offers himself willingly a sacrifice, does not come to death by good advice (hitopadeśena) but due to generosity. Hertel, in his opinion that the tale originally has been
an example of generous self-sacrifice, finds the proof in the stories of Livius (No. 13), in the
Mbh. (No. 12,), and in the Vikramacharita (No. 9). But the Roman story cannot decide
anything in this question and the story of Āruṇi is far different contents. It indeed does
The narration of the ascetic who met with death by giving good advice is in conformity in nearly all points with the original version of the prose narration of the Takkāriyaj, to which we arrived by the examination of the Gāthās. It was not on account of his talkativeness, but because he spoke to help others, that the teacher of Takkāriya found death. The untruthfulness of his wife, the jealously for the rival, the teacher’s intention to get rid of him, all this is apparently later addition of the author of the prose. It is not backed by the Gāthās. Whether in the original narration the teacher was the Purohita of the king is not to be found out from the Gāthās. In any case, however, he was, as is shown by the vocative āchera in G. 2, a member of the priestly class as well as the hero in the later stories. It is possible that the matter in which he gave his advice was about the building of a city gate. In No. 10 also a sacrifice of a human being for securing the construction of a city gate occurs.
If one compares the expressions sobbham imam patāmi in G. 1, yan taṁ nikhananti sobbhe, with
the expressions vivaraṁ pravīshṭaḥ, bilaṁ pravishṭaḥ in the stanzas of Nos. 2, 3, 5, it does not
seem unreasonable that the poet of the Gāthās had in view a person’s being pushed down in
an earth-hole, may it be a simple gap in the earth as in No. 2 or, as in Nos. 1, 3-7, an opening
in a tank or a river. On the other hand the yellow eyes and the protruding teeth of the
Purohita in the Jātaka story may be old and more original than the lucky bodily marks [1]By the side of it in the different recensions we are also told of his helpfulness, his heroism and his cleverness. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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