North Indian Inscriptions

PART B

B 58 (706) ; PLATES XXI, XLVII

ON a coping-stone, now in the Indian Museum, Calcutta (A 52). Edited by Cunningham, PASB. 1874, p. 112; StBh. (1879), p. 79; 131, No. 17, and Pl. XLVIII and LIII ; Hultzsch, ɀDMG. Vol. XL (1886), p. 62, No. 17, and Pl.; IA. Vol. XXI (1892), p. 226; 228, No. 17; Barua-Sinha, BI. (1926), p. 92, No. 213 ; Barua, Barh. Vol. II (1934), p. 139 f., and Vol. III (1937), Pl. LXXXVI (127); Lüders, Bhārh. (1941), p. 135.

TEXT:
bhisaharaniya jataka[ṁ]

TRASLATION:
The Jātaka relating to the stealing of the lotus-stalks.

  The Jataka to which the label belongs was identified by Hultzsch with the Bhisajātaka No. 488 in the Pāli collection. It contains an ancient legend referred to already in the Aitareyabrāhmaṇa^[1] and told twice in the Mahābhārata^[2], which by the Buddhists was turned into a Jātaka. In the Pāli story the Bodhisattva is a wealthy brahmin who, together with his six younger brothers, his sister, male and a female slave and a friend, has renounced the house-older’s life and dwells as ascetic in the Himavat near a lotus-lake. The six brothers, the slave and the friend take turns to fetch lotus-stalks for food. He, whose turn it is, deposits the stalks he has gathered, divided into eleven portions, on a flat stone. The others then come up and each takes his allotted portion and eats it in his own place.

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By this mode of life they gain time for practising their austerities. By the power of their virtues Sakka’s world trembles, and the god resolves to find out whether they are really free from wordly desires or not. On three successive days he causes the Bodhisattva’s share to disappear. When the Bodhisattva accuses his companions of having stolen his lotus-stalks, they, each in his turn, clear themselves of the charge by swearing an oath in which they invoke temporal blessings on the thief. Three other beings who live near the hermitage, a tree-spirit, an elephant, and a monkey join the ascetics in the swearing, but with the difference that they hold out a miserable life for themselves in case they should have been the thieves. Then Sakka who invisibly attended the scene manifests himself, confesses what he has done, and returns the lotus-stalks. The Bodhisattva forgives him.

  On the coping-stone an ascetic is seen seated in front of his hut on a stone on which a skin is spread. A well-dressed man carrying a bundle of lotus-stalks approaches him from the right. Around him are a woman wearing an ascetic’s dress, an elephant and a monkey squatted on the ground. The sculpture apparently represents the returning of the locus-stalks by Sakka. Of the witnesses of the scene the sculptor has shown only three ─ a female who is probably meant for the sister, the elephant and the monkey. He has certainly done so, not because he followed a different version of the story, but because he found it impossible to cram all thirteen into the narrow compass of the relief.

B 59 (807); PLATES XXI, XLII

ON a pillar, formerly at Batanmāra, now in the Indian Museum, Calcutta (M 11) Edited by Cunningham, StBh. (1879), p.58 ; 138, No. 94, and Pl. XXV and LV ; Hultzsch, IA. Vol. XXI (1892), p. 239, No. 155; Barua-Sinha, BI. (1926), p. 97, No. 221; Barua,
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^[1]Ait. Br. V. 30, 10 f.
^[2]Mbh. XIII, 93, 1 ff. Cf. Charpentier, ZDMG. Vol. LXIV, p. 65 ff., LXVI, p. 44 ff.