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________________ INDIAN NARRATIVE LITERATURE : A STUDY 537 moment transforms itself into a moment of discovery and a common man into a Near Buddha. The Story of the Makandi brothers' voyage should find a worthy place in the voyage literature of the world, by the side of Haklyut's voyages and many other Spanish and Italian accounts. The Indian woman mentioned in this story, the terrible woman who charms sailors by her beauty and youth but destroys them by her demands has her counterpart in Homer's Circe. The story also works up a fabulous atmosphere which clearly sends ripples of Arabian Nights in our minds. This collection of stories should prove how very inadequate it is to describe Prakrit writings as merely didactic and religious. It may mainly be so but not entirely. It presents quite a variety of situations that should remind readers of Boccaccio or Balzac. Read for instance the story called Water from the Roof. The story of Muladeva and the courtesan Devadatta is equally secular and sympathetically human. The story of Rohini that offers comments on the basic human types should not be read only as a defence of the Varna system in Indian sociology. The criminals that appear in some of the stories bring in a landscape that is rich in psychologically meaningful symbols such as underground dwellings, dilapidated temples, deep wells and beautiful but wicked women. Other stories describe retail traders that are not very scrupulous with simple minded villagers, cheats, unfaithful husbands and equally dishonest women...the whole lot of humanity has crowded up in this panorama of life and the Indian story literature has tried to capture for us the kaleidoscopic and elusive beauty that we call human nature. Two other women, besides Rohini stand out prominently in this display of the complex pattern of human contradiction. One of them is the poor young woman whom a king marries. She becomes an object of satire of the other queens in the palace in spite of the dignity with which she conducts herself. But she is never lost to what she considers the basic reality of her life--everyday she spends some time in the privacy of her room and puts on once again the same old rags in which the king had picked her up, stands in front of her minor and reminds herself of the transitoriness of the surrounding pomp and glory and of the reality of the poverty in which she was born. The other remarkable lady is the famous Princess Malli who has the distinction of becoming the only female Tirthankara. She too has a firm hold on reality which teaches her that the golden sheen of the outside of the body very much depends on the unhampered, unrepressed and unhibited functioning of the internals. Her suitors were misguided as much as most of us. Actually she is a fully integrated personality for which, as Carl Jung would approvingly suggest, gold is the right symbol. No wonder Malli leaves behind her statue of gold, with no element of corrupt materials." Stud.-68 Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org
| SR No. | 001868 |
| Book Title | Studies in Jain Literature |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | V M Kulkarni |
| Publisher | Shardaben Chimanbhai Educational Research Centre |
| Publication Year | 2001 |
| Total Pages | 114 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English, Literature, & Story |
| File Size | 14 MB |