Treasury of Jain Tales

SR No.: 006762
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: V M Kulkarni
Publisher: Shardaben Chimanbhai Educational Research Centre
Publication Year: 1994
Total Pages: 468
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 17 MB

Page 91

6. BRAHMADATTA
(This unfortunate young man who inherits the sin of sensuality from his mother and continues to suffer over two or three life times is subjected to a lot of ironic treatment. The story in some parts has the Oedipus-Hamlet framework and the end is almost like that of Oedipus who has his eyes gouged.
The final scene however should not blot out the sincere affection that had tried to save the poor young man whose end is pathetic.)
-GSB Municandra, a prince turned ascetic was once lost in a forest. He wandered on and on but could not find his companions. He sat down out of terrible fatigue and was found unconscious by some four boys that were in the forest tending their cattle. These boys looked after the ascetic. By his teachings they were so greatly impressed that they accepted initiation from him. In course of time when two of them that had felt a certain loathing for the monastic way of life died, they were sent into the next birth as two boys born to an unclean slave girl out of her illicit relations with her Brahmin master. The next two births that came to these two boys after death were in the animal kind-- first as two fawns and then as two swans. However their next birth was as human beings, this time as the sons of a cāndāla who worked as an executioner for the king of Banaras.
Once it so happened that this king discovered one of his ministers, a Brahmin, Namuci by name, to have been involved in a situation that provoked royal wrath. The king ordered his căndāla executioner to put the minister to death immediately and secretly.