Chapter XXI: Section XIV: Pre-eminence of the Vernaculars; or, the Anglicists (2)

[281] This verse is quoted by the Dhammapada Commentator, p. 146, where the Introductory Story is substantially the same, though differing in some details. The first line of the verse is curious, as there is nothing in the fable about righteousness or courtesy. It either belonged originally to some other tale, or is made purposely in discord with the facts to hint still more strongly at the absurdity of the worthy deer attempting to make human poetry.

[282] This Introductory Story is given also as the occasion on which v. 160 of the Dhammapada was spoken (Fausböll, pp. 327 and foll.)

[283] The thirty-two constituent parts will be found enumerated in the Khuddaka Pāṭha, p. 3, and most of them are mentioned in the following verses, which are not attributed to the ‘attractive’ young wife, and which sound wooden enough after her spirited outburst. Possibly they are a quotation by this commentator of some monkish rhymes he thinks appropriate to the occasion. The whole of the conversation is omitted in the Dhammapada commentary.

Bound together by bones and sinews,
O’erspread with flesh and integument,
The body is hidden ‘neath its skin,--
It seems not as it really is!

It is filled inside--the trunk is filled--
With liver, and with abdomen;
With heart and lungs, kidney and spleen;
With mucus, matter, sweat, and fat;
With blood, and grease, and bile, and marrow.

And from each of its nine orifices
Impurity flows ever down:
Rheum from the eye, wax from the ear,
From the nose mucus, vomit from the mouth;
And bile and phlegm do both come out
From the perspiring, dirty frame.

Its hollow head, too, is but filled
With the nerve-substance of the brain.
Yet the fool, whom dullness never leaves,
He thinks it beautiful and bright.

The body causes endless ills;--
Resembles just a upas-tree;
The dwelling-place of all disease,
Is but a mass of misery.

Were the inside of this body
Only visible without,
One would have to take a stick in hand
To save oneself from crows and dogs!

Evil-smelling and impure,
The body’s like a filthy corpse;
Despised by those who’ve eyes to see,
It’s only praised by those who’re fools!

[284] Literally reached the chief Fruit; the benefit resulting from the completion of the last stage of the path leading to Nirvāna; that is, Nirvāna itself. It is a striking proof of the estimation in which women were held among the early Buddhists, that they are several times declared to have reached this highest result of intellectual activity and earnest zeal. Compare the Introductory Story to Jātaka No. 234.

[285] _Bos Grunniens._

[286] See ‘Buddhism,’ pp. 139, 140.

[287] Quoted by the Dhammapada commentator, p. 329.

[288] The two previous lines should belong, I think, to the explanatory comment.

[289] The story of _Raṭṭhapāla_ is given in the Sutta of that name, translated by Gogerly, J. C. A. S., 1847-1848, p. 95. The same plan was followed by _Sudinna_ as related in the Pārājikaŋ, and translated by Coles, J. C. A. S., 1876-1877, p. 187.

[290] This is the third of the Thirteen just alluded to.

[291] “’Eight-hoofed,’ two hoofs on each foot,” explains the commentator. See note on p. 223.

[292] This amusing Introductory Story will scarcely bear translating.

[293] The verse is very obscure, and the long commentary does not make it clearer. “To keep in any posture that he likes” is literally “having three postures--master of three postures.” “Most swift” is in the original “eight-hoofed.” If “eight-hoofed” means “with two hoofs on each foot,” as the commentator thinks, where would be the peculiarity so creditable to the obedient learner? The last line in the test is so corrupt that the commentator can only suggest three contradictory and improbable explanations. If one could venture to read _chavaŋ kalāhati bhoti_, one might render, “My nephew, lady, can counterfeit a corpse.” Mr. Trenckner has been good enough to send me the following suggested translation, “The deer, the threefold cunning (?) fertile in expedients, the cloven-footed, who goes to drink at midnight (!?) (don’t fear for him), lying on one ear, panting on the ground, my nephew, by the six tricks he knows will dodge (the hunter).”

[294] Compare the Fable of the Two sides of the Shield.

[295] That is, by the production at their death of angels as the result of their Karma.

[296] That is, in seeking after what they think is salvation (safety from the wrath of a god), fools practise rites and harbour delusions which become spiritual bonds. Death to oneself, and spiritual rebirth, is the only true salvation. The whole parable is a play on the word “_Mutti_,” which means both salvation, and the performance of, the being delivered from, a vow.

[297] Any one who has seen the restlessness of monkeys in the safe precincts of a Buddhist monastery (or even in the monkey-house at the Zoological Gardens) will appreciate the humour of this description. The Bharhut sculptor, too, has some capital monkeys sitting, like good little boys, and listening to the Bodisat.

[298] This solemn appeal to a former good action, if it be true, is often represented as working a miracle, and is called _saccakiriyā_, _i.e._ “truth-act.” Childers properly compares 2 Kings i. 10: “If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And there came down fire from heaven and consumed him and his fifty.” But the miracle, said in the Buddhist scriptures to follow on an appeal of this kind, is usually, as in this case, an assistance to some one in distress. On the Perfections, see above, pp. 54 to 58.

[299] This seems to be a gloss, as the writer adds, “He could not have stopped at that point; so it should not thus be understood.”

[300] On this story, see the translator’s “Buddhism,” pp. 196-198.

[301] On this story, see below, Jātaka No. 35.

[302] This verse is quoted by the Dhammapada Commentator, Fausböll, p. 147.

[303] The Commentator on the “Scripture Verses” (p. 331), says that it was at the end of this story that the Buddha uttered the 162nd verse of that Collection--“He who exceeds in wickedness makes himself such as his enemy might desire, (dragging himself down) as the creeper the tree which it has covered.”

[304] Literally, of the Agatis (things of which a judge, and especially a king, sitting as judge, ought not to be guilty); they are four in number, partiality, ill-will, ignorance, and fear.

[305] See the last Introductory Story.

[306] A title of honour given to Sāriputta.

[307] This is verse No. 285 of the ‘Scripture Verses,’ _àpropos_ of which the commentator tells the same story as is told here.

[308] This Introductory Story is also told as the introduction to Jātakas Nos. 141 and 184.

[309] A “Rogue elephant” is a well-known technical term for a male who has been driven out of the herd, and away from the females, by a stronger than himself; or for a male, who, in the rutting season, has lost his self-command. Such elephants, however gentle before, become exceedingly vicious and wanton.

[310] Literally Samaṇa-Brāhmans, the Samaṇas, or Self-conquering Ones, being those who have given up the world, and devoted themselves to lives of self-renunciation and of peace. Real superiority of caste--true Brāmanship--is the result, not of birth, but of self-culture and self-control. The Samaṇas are therefore the true Brāhmans, ‘Brāhmans by saintliness of life.’ The Samaṇas were not necessarily Buddhists, though they disregarded the rites and ceremonies inculcated by the Brāhmans. It would not have answered the king’s purpose to send Brāhmans: who are distinguished throughout the Jātakas, not by holiness of life, but by birth; and who would be represented as likely to talk, not of righteousness, but of ritual. I cannot render the compound, therefore, by ‘Samaṇas AND Brāhmans,’ and I very much doubt whether it ever has that meaning (but see Childers _contra_, under _Samaṇa_). It certainly never has the sense of ‘Samaṇas OR Brāhmans.’ It was an early Buddhist idea that the only true Samaṇas were those members of the Order who had entered the Noble Path, and the only true Brāhmans those who had reached to the goal of the Noble Path, that is, to Nirvāna. See Mahā Parinibbana Sutta, p. 58.

[311] Perhaps ‘Woman-face’ would be a more literal rendering of the word _Mahilā-mukha_. But as the allusion is evidently to the elephant’s naturally gentle character, I have rendered the expression by ‘Girly-face.’ The exaggeration in this story is somewhat too absurd for Western tastes.

[312] So at p. 121 of the Mahāvaŋsa the king sends Mahinda to find out why the state elephant refused his food. Mahinda finds the motive to be that the elephant wants a _Dāgaba_ to be built; and the king, “who always gratified the desires of his subjects,” had the temple built at once! The author of the Mahāvaŋsa must often have heard the Jātaka stories told, and this among the number.

[313] _Note by the Commentator._ “This so-called enforcing (or illustrating) the story by a discourse on the Four Truths is to be understood at the end of every Jātaka; but we only mention it when it appears that it was blessed (to the conversion of some character in the Introductory Story).”

[314] These “Six” are noted characters in Buddhist legend. They are six bad monks, whose evil deeds and words are said to have given occasion to many a “bye-law,” if one may so say, enacted in the Vinaya Pitaka for the guidance of the members of the Buddhist Order of Mendicants.

[315] This was a December festival, held to celebrate the close of the season of WAS, the four (or, according to some authorities, three) months of rainy weather, during which the members of the Order had to stay in one place. The Buddha had spent WAS among the angels--not, of course, that he cared to go to heaven for his own sake, but to give the ignorantly happy and deluded angels an opportunity of learning how to forsake the error of their ways. In a subsequent form of this curious legend, whose origin is at present unknown, he is said to have descended into hell with a similar object. See Professor Cowell in the _Indian Antiquary_ for 1879.

[316] It will be observed that the old woman’s ‘Blackie’ could understand what was said to him, and make his own meaning understood; but he could not speak.

[317] If _Muṇika_, the name of the Pig, is derived from the root MAR (B. R. No. 2)--as I think it must be, in spite of the single ṇ--it is a verbal noun derived from a past participle, meaning ‘cut into small pieces.’ The idea is doubtless of the small pieces of meat used for curry, as the Indians had no sausages. I could not dare to coin such a word as ‘Curry-bit-ling,’ and have therefore preserved the joke by using a word which will make it intelligible to European readers.

This well-told story is peculiarly interesting as being one of those Indian stories which have reached Europe independently of both the ‘Kalilag and Dimnag’ and the ‘Barlaam and Josaphat’ literature. Professor Benfey (pp. 228-229 of his Introduction to the Pañca Tantra) has traced stories somewhat analogous throughout European literature; but our story itself is, he says, found almost word for word in an unpublished Hebrew book by Berachia ben Natronai, only that two donkeys take the place of the two oxen. Berachia lived in the twelfth or thirteenth century, in Provence.

One of the analogous stories is where a falcon complains to a cock, that, while he (the falcon) is so grateful to men for the little they give him that he comes and hunts for them at their beck and call, the cock, though fed up to his eyes, tries to escape when they catch him. “Ah!” replies the cock, “I never yet saw a falcon brought to table, or frying in a pan!” (Anvar i Suhaili, p. 144; Livre des Lumières, p. 112; Cabinet des Fées, xvii. 277; Bidpai et Lokman, ii. 59; La Fontaine, viii. 21). Among the so-called Æsop’s Fables is also one where a calf laughs at a draught ox for bearing his drudgery so patiently. The ox says nothing. Soon after there is a feast, and the ox gets a holiday, while the calf is led off to the sacrifice (James’s Æsop, No. 150).

Jātaka No. 286 is the same story in almost the same words, save (1) that the pig’s name is there _Sālūha_, which means the edible root of the water-lily, and might be freely rendered ‘Turnips’; and (2) that there are three verses instead of one. As special stress is there laid on the fact that ‘Turnips’ was allowed to lie on the _heṭṭhā-mañca_, which I have above translated ‘sty,’ it is possible that the word means the platform or seat in front of the hut, and under the shade of the overhanging eaves,--a favourite resort of the people of the house.

[318] The following tale is told, with some variations, in the course of the commentary on verse 30 of the Dhammapada (pp. 186 and foll.); but the Introductory Story is there different.

[319] The commentator on the “Scripture Verses” adds an interesting point--that there was an inscription on the pinnacle, and that the Bodisat put up a stone seat under a tree outside, that all who went in might read the letters, and say, “This hall is called the Hall of Piety.”

[320] The “Scripture Verses” commentator (p. 189) avoids the curious abruptness of this rather unkind remark by adding that the reason for this was that Well-born’s being the Bodisat’s niece and servant, she thought she would share in the merit of _his_ part in the work.

[321] Vejayanta. Compare what is said above, p. 97, of Māra’s _vāhana_, Giri-mekhala.

[322] That is, his own angels and those of the archangel Brahma.

[323] In this story we have a good example of the way in which the current legends, when adopted by the Buddhists, were often so modified as to teach lessons of an effect exactly contrary to those they had taught before. It is with a touch of irony that Sakka is made to conquer the Titans, not by might, but through his kindness to animals.

[324] See above, p. 178.

[325] How this was done, and the lasting feud which the election gave rise to between the owl and the crow, is told at length in Jātaka No. 270. The main story in Book III. of the Pañca Tantra is founded on this feud.

[326] This fable forms one of those illustrations of which were carved in bas relief round the Great Tope at Bharhut. There the fair gosling is represented just choosing the peacock for her husband; so this tale must be at least sixteen hundred years old. The story has not reached Europe; but it is referred to in a stanza occurring in, according to Benfey, the oldest recension of the Pañca Tantra contained in the Berlin MS. See Benfey, i. § 98, p. 280; and Kahn, ‘Sagwissenschaftliche Studien,’ p. 69.

The word _Haŋsa_, which I have here translated Goose, means more exactly a wild duck; and the epithet ‘_Golden_’ is descriptive of its beauty of colour. But the word Haŋsa is etymologically the same as our word Goose (compare the German Gans); and the epithet ‘_golden_,’ when applied to a goose, being meaningless as descriptive of outward appearance, gave rise to the fable of the Goose with the Golden Eggs. The latter is therefore a true ’myth,’ born of a word-puzzle, invented to explain an expression which had lost its meaning through the progress of linguistic growth.

[327] Professor Benfey, in the Introduction to his Pañca Tantra (vol. i. p. 304), and Professor Fausböll in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1870, have dealt with the history of this story. It has not been found in Europe, but occurs in somewhat altered form in the Mahā-bhārata (Book V. vv. 2455 and foll.), in the first Book of the Hitopadesa, and in the second Book of the Pañca Tantra. The Buddhist story is evidently the origin of the others.

[328] This story has several points of affinity with the one above, No. 13 (pp. 211-213), on the stag who came to his death through his thoughtless love for the roe.

[329] See above, p. 235.

[330] Bheṇḍuka.

[331] It is difficult to convey the impression of the mystic epithet here used of fire. _Jātaveda_ must mean “he who possesses (or perhaps possesses the knowledge of) all that is produced.” It is used not infrequently in the Vedic literature as a peculiarly holy and mystical epithet of Agni, the personification of the mysterious element of fire, and seems to refer to its far-reaching, all-embracing power.

[332] This story is referred to as one of the ‘kalpa-enduring miracles’ in Jātaka No. 20 above, p. 235.

[333] See above, p. 130.

[334] See the translator’s ‘Buddhism,’ pp. 108 and 174-177 (2nd edition).

[335] This Birth Story, with the same Introductory Story, is found, in nearly identical terms, in the Culla Vagga (vi. 6). The story, therefore, is at least as old as the fourth century B.C. Jātaka No. 117 is also called the Tittira Jātaka.

[336] This fable is a great favourite. It was among those translated into the Syriac and Arabic, and has been retained in all the versions of the Kalila and Dimna series, while it occurs in the Arabian Nights, and in the story-books of the Northern Buddhists and of the Hindus. It has been already traced through all the following story-books (whose full titles, and historical connexion, are given in the Tables appended to the Introduction to this volume).

Kalilag und Dimnag, pp. 12, 13.
Sylvestre de Sacy, chapter v.
Wolf, vol. i. p. 41.
Anvār i Suhaili, p. 117.
Knatchbull, pp. 113-115.
Symeon Seth (Athens edition), p. 16.
John of Capua, c. 4 b.
’Ulm’ German text, D. V. b.
The Spanish version, xiii. 6.
Firenzuola, p. 39.
Doni, p. 59.
Livre des Lumières, p. 92.
Cabinet des Fées, xvii. p. 221.
Livre des Merveilles (du Meril in a note to Batalo, p. 238).
Contes et Fables Indiennes de Bidpai et de Lokman, i. p. 357.
La Fontaine, x. 4.
Arabian Nights (Weil, iv. 915).
Pañca Tantra, i. 7 (comp. ii. 58).
Hitopadesa, iv. 7 (Max Müller. p. 118).
Kathā Sarit Sāgara Tar. lx. 79-90.
Dhammapada, p. 155.

Professor Benfey has devoted a long note to the history of the story (Introduction to the Pañca Tantra, i. 174, § 60), and I have only succeeded in adding, in a few details, to his results. The tale is told very lamely, as compared with the Pāli original, in all those versions I have been able to consult. It is strange that so popular a tale was not included by Planudes or his successors in their collections of so-called Æsop’s Fables.

[337] In the so-called Æsop’s Fables are several on the text that a haughty spirit goeth before a fall; for instance, ‘The Charger and the Ass,’ ‘The Bull and the Frog,’ and ‘The Oats and the Reeds’; but this is the only story I know directed against the pride arising from the temporary possession of wealth.

[338] It is a great breach of etiquette for an inferior to remain in any place above that where his superior is.

[339] One who has the power of gaining salvation for himself; but not of giving others the knowledge of it. The Birth Story to which this is an Introduction is about a gift to a Pacceka Buddha.

[340] _Ariya-puggalas_, the persons who, by self-culture and self-control, have entered respectively on the Four Stages, and have reached the Four Fruits of the Noble Eightfold path.

[341] This story is quoted in ‘Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio,’ translated by Herbert A. Giles, vol. i. p. 396.

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Transcriber's Notes

Obvious typographical errors and inconsistencies have been silently corrected. Hyphenation and diacritics have been standardised, but other variations in spelling and punctuation remain unchanged.

Italics are represented thus _italic_ and bold thus =bold=.