North Indian Inscriptions

PART B

   “Everyone is without understanding for somebody who understands (the matter) differently than how he does. Everybody has understanding for the man who yields to (one’s own) understanding. All beings understand (things) in their own way, each one for himself. Whose understanding shall I follow under these circumstances^[1]?”

   The king thereupon releases the kinnara too and the story ends with a Gāthā, wrongly attributed to the king in the prose account (G. 13):

   “The kinnara together with his wife stood silent. Because he spoke, fearing danger for himself, he became free, safe and sound. Speech, indeed, brings profit to men.”

   Nobody can deny that the relief is in best conformity with this narration. Only the label seems to go against this identification, as indeed the story of the kinnaras in the form as it is handed down, is in reality no Jātaka but only cited in a Jātaka as an example. Now it is quite possible that the story was originally an independent Jātaka. In any case, however, it must have been taken into the Takkāriyaj. before the final redaction of the Jātaka-collection was made, for the Takkāriyaj. with its 13 Gāthās is rightly inserted in the Terasanipāta. I therefore should like to believe that Kinnarajātaka is only another name for the Takkāriyaj. The nomenclature appears justified from two points of view. The narration of the kinnaras is not only the most important part of the Jātaka in regard to its size─it comprehends more than half of all the Gāthās─but in respect to its essence as well: the whole little poem teaches nothing but worldly wisdom in an unbuddhist manner, and ends with the climax in the last words: vāchā kir’ ev’ atthavatī narāṇaṁ ‘speech, indeed, brings profit to men’.

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE ON THE TAKKARIYAJATAKA

   The Takkāriyajātaka, due to various reasons, is one of the most interesting in the Pāli collection. According to the prose narration the contents are as follows: King Brahmadatta of Benares has a Purohita possessing yellow eyes and protruding teeth^[2]. The wife of the Purohita has illicit relations with another brahmin of the same appearance. The Purohita resolves to get rid of his rival by a stratagem. He goes to the king and tells him that the Southern gate of his town is badly fortified and is inauspicious. One ought to built a new one made out of auspicious timber and fix it after offering a sacrifice to the tutelary deities of the town under an auspicious constellation. The king consents. The Purohita has the new gate made, the old one pulled down, and announce to the king that on the following day there would be a favourable date to offer the sacrifice and to erect the gate. He further adds that one ought to sacrifice and bury underneath the gate a brahmin possessing yellow eyes and protruding teeth. When the Purohita returns to his house, he is not able to keep silent, being full of joy over the success of his stratagem and tells his wife that he would sacrifice her lover the next morning. The wife in a hurry warns her lover, who thereupon runs away from the town together with all the other brahmins having yellow eyes and protruding teeth. When on the morning of the offering-day no other suitable brahmin is to be found the king commands to kill the Purohita and give his office of Purohita to his pupil Takkāriya. The old Purohita is brought to Takkāriya in fetters who explains to him in a series of stories, the bad results of untimely speaking and saves him afterwards from death by pretending that the favourable constellation has not arrived. He lets the day pass. At night he allows his teacher to escape unnoticed and performs the sacrifice with a dead ram.
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^[1]The text and the commentary of the Gāthā are distorted in many ways. In the first pāda certainly parachitte has to be read instead of parachitto corresponding to chittavasamhi in the second pāda. In the last pāda we have to read either kass’idha chittassa vasena vatte or kass’idha chittassa vase nu vatte.
^[2]AO. XVI, p. 131 ff.