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year numbered 83,750 after Nemi(nätha)," the conqueror of death, Pärsvanātha whose life followed this interval, was born with a life-span of a century, with a body complexion of a young rice plant and provided with all auspicious marks, nine cubits tall, prosperous (and) born in a high-born family, after 16 years he was more or less adolescent
96. krīdârtham sva balenâmā nirvāvā vād bahih puram.
āśramadi-vane mātur Mahi-päla-purâdhipam
THI There is no explanation as against Bhd 5,126 who derives the name from pārsvatal his mother's side near which she saw a cobra the night before, a tradition first found in AvNH 1091. This "etymology is certainly a wrong sanskritisation of Ardha-Māgadhi Passa/Pāsa for which I surmised the etymology (l)pâśvasena) in Bollée 1998: 366f., see Balcerowicz 2005: 5771., my forthcoming review of Wiley, and Seldeslachts in Tikkanen 2006: 121f1. Balcerowicz 2005: 578f. takes up a connection with *Pārsava. a development from Parsu (sec N. J. Sāh referred to by Dundas 2002: 283 note 26). This, however, would require the assumption of the clision of the penultimate -a- (p.c. from Paul Dundas who suggests that the tribal designation Parśu and i amiliarity with miraculous births of supermen from e.g. the "side" of the mother might also have played a role in conditioning the name Pārsva < Pāsa"). - Snakes are ominous animals (Jagaddeva II 78): fear of them is innate in humans but no such reaction from Queen Vämä is handed down. As to the cobra myth it is a pity we cannot ask anymore the ethno-psychoanalist Georges Devereux about the improbable nocturnal emergence of a snake near a queen in a royal bedroom.
!!! Hemac., Th" IX 4.318. expresses this normally. On nouns with numerical value in Sanskrit see Bollée 2008.
112 Usually Pārsva is said to be of a dark complexion, as in Hemac., Trio IX 3,35, where he has the colour of a creeper (? privangi), i.e. very dark (see Johnson V 1962: 379 note 334 pointing to its anti-evil eye quality), or 48, where his body colour is likened to blue lotuses. Also Hemac., Trio IV 4,109, sapi nilarainamala-Ivisam tanuvam janavāmāsa and Bhd 5, 43 nilabham susuve putram ratnam vaidūrva-bhür iva. The dark colour is apparently not connected with the danger of asphyxia, but is as auspicious as, c.g., moon- or gold-colour (Hemac., Trio IV 4,105, sita-ruci-prabha and 6, 20 suvarna-varna respectively), though in fact it is the colour of a snake, for Pārsva was the son of the snake king Asvasena. See also Schubring 1977: 3791.. who did not see the Mbh 1 218,6 and Bhavadeva (Bloomfield 1919: 243) references and thought the serpent king Dharana would be Pārsva's connection with the Nāga. Zimmer 1951: 196 considers Pāsa non-Aryan, which is improbable for a prince of Benares at that time; for his "dark brother" associations see ibidem 186ff. Hemac., Trio IV, 1, 227 describes Triprstha as dark. See also Ruben 1944: 45ff.
113 In Bhd 5,135 these marks number 32 instead of 22 as stated by Bloomfield 1919: 110.
114 It is also possible to read: Laksmívân-ugra-. gentle like Laksmi.
111