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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
PART B of the jackal is motivated by its natural greed, the Kuliṅka really has no reason to interfere with the fight of the rams. To this may be added that the purpose of the story of the kinnara told by the pupil at the end is clearly to show that a word spoken at the right time brings profit. We should therefore except that the preceding examples show that untimely speech leads to calamity, in the same way as in the second Gāthā Takkāriya expressly refers the Purohita to the fact that a man when he speaks at the improper time experiences death, calamity, and grief. Instead of this, cases are mentioned in which the intention to help others leads to disaster. Now the Purohita brought himself to calamity by untimely speaking, however in no way did he speak with good intention. In the present prose account the examples cited do not fit into the mains narration. If it were narrated that he spoke an untimely word to help others and thereby nearly brought himself to death, then it would be understandable that the pupil told him other cases “highly similar” of well-meant but untimely interference in the affairs of others, and gave at the end an example of talking at the right time. In fact a story, corresponding to these requirements, is widely spread in later literature. We know of it, thanks to Hertel, who in ɀDMG. LX, p. 778 ff., Pañchatantra p. 140, collected the different versions of the tale and compared it with the Jataka. In the Pañchatantra translation of Dubois[1] (1) Damanaka narrates the following in order to show that it is dangerous to tell the truth to kings. King Darma-Dahla of Oudjyny (Ujjayinī) gets a big tank dug out, but it is not possible to fill it with water, as all the water flows out into a deep cavity by some unnoticeable gap. A muni instructs him that this is a consequence of some magic which would end only when a Rājaputra or a muni is sacrificed. The king immediately orders to kill the muni, to whom he owes the advice, and to throw his body into the tank. The body by chance fills up the gap, so that the tank gets filled and can be used to fertilize the land all around.
Another version in preserved in the story No. 25 of the Tantrākhyāna (2)[2]. The opening stanza says: hitaṁ na vākyam ahitaṁ[3] na vākyaṁ hitāhitaṁ yady ubhayaṁ na vākyam | Kuruṇṭhako[4] nāma Kaliṅgarāja hitopadeśī vivaraṁ pravishṭaḥ | âOne shall not speak something profitable nor something unprofitable, nor shall one speak, when something is both, profitable and unprofitable: A king of Kaliṅga, Kuruṇṭhaka by name, entered the gap in the earth, because he had given good adviceâ. In the tale belonging thereto it is narrated that the king Kuruṇṭhaka of Kaliṅga once rides out for hunting. His horse runs away with him and carries him to a village, where suddenly a gap in the earth has appeared which the people cannot fill in by any means. The king tells them that it can be filled if a man bearing lucky marks can be offered in sacrifice. As he himself is the only man of this kind he is thrown into the earth gap.
In the fourth tale of the Pañchākhyānavārttika(3)[5], instead of the king, a skull-bearing
ascetic named Koraṇṭaka appears. The opening stanza reads here.
[1]Pantcho-Tantra, p. 34. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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