________________
477
that his father too must have experienced a similar delight when he himself was born. At once he ordered his gaolers to set his father free. But just then he received a note conveying the death of the former king. As the king read it, he gave out a shriek of distress and rushed straight to his mother, He asked,
"Mother ! Did my father have affection for me"?
The mother narrated how the ex-king had sucked at his finger when he was afflicted by a severe boil on it. This redoubled his grief and he lamented for what he had done.
Biographical Sketch: A review
Though the details of the mother's desire during her pregnancy, the finger boil, the imprisonment of King Bimbis ara, etc., are different, the two accounts run almost parallel. Keeping in view the fact that the two traditions are widely different, this much difference between the two need not be overemphasized. All great events gain currency in diverse forms even when they are a part of current history. The date of the writing of the Jaina Agama, Nirayālikā, is accepted to be before the commencement of the Vikrama era (105), whereas the Buddhist Att hakathās were written in the fifth century of the Vikrama era (106). This is another reason for the difference between the two. Stories which were preserved in, and transmitted through, memory in different traditions were put to writing after a few centuries or at a gap of a few centuries.
The accounts of the murder of the former king make it clear that whereas the Buddhist tradition was bent on exposing the cruelty of Ajātas'atru, the Jaina tradition attempted a sort of compromise. The Buddhist account of the piercing of the legs, pouring salt and oil, etc., is extremely inhuman. In the Jaina account, Srenika was imprisoned, of course, but there is nothing to establish: that he was starved to death. Whereas in the Jaina account, Srenika himself committed sucide, in the Buddhist account, he was actually killed. The softness of the Jaina account may be due to the fact that Künika had an extraordinary devotion for Jainism.
