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(c) in the panels: rat or antelope, snake, elephant, lion, Rsabha. gandabherunda;
(2) those of the Jain writings, which we have analyzed out as: frog, snake, osprey;
(3) that of the Kota story: worm, myna bird, karl bird, kite.
These chains are combined variously with one of two motifs:
[1] a sage transforms the first animal of the chain into the second and so successively through the chain; the final animal wants to destroy the sage; he transforms it back into the original animal. This is found in the Mahabharata and the Hitopadesa.
[2] the first animal of the chain is devoured by the second, which is devoured by the third, and so through the chain; and man (or men) sees the chain of destruction and 'gets religion'. This is found in all but the Mahabharata and the Hitopadesa, the version in Rudrabhatta being defectively reported but presumably belonging here. That the two versions with [1] are connected the Hitopadesa being derived from the Mahabharata-is obvious. The chains are different in these two varsions(1a) and (1b). That of the Hitopadesa owes its beginning to the Pancatantra mouse-maiden transformation story, whose place it taken in the Hitopadesa by the story we are studying. In it a mouse is transformed to a maiden and back again, after it appears that only a mouse can be found as a suitor for the maiden. A crossing of the Pancatantra transformation having a mouse as the first member, with the Mahabharata transformation story, has yielded a new transformation story with the Mahabharata motif [1] but a chain beginning with a mouse. The cat is a natural second member in the chain, and then the old chain is linked on with its beginning dog. The
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remainder of the chain is violently curtailed. The leopard and the tiger of the Mahabharata chain are practically duplicates of one another, and the Hitopadesa keeps only are practically duplicates of one another, and the Hitopadesa keeps only the tiger. Can we find an underlying reason for this omission and for the further curtailment by the dropping of the three members following the tiger? Recent perusal of a number of Hitopadesa stories has given me the impression that its author in general compressed those Pancatantra stories that he adopted for his text-sometimes to the point almost of unintelligibility. The curtailment in this story taken in the main from the Mahabharata would then be another instance of the same process, possessing no further significance
Motif [2]-the chain of destruction' instigates someone to 'get religion-is chronologically found [7] first in Jain texts. It is very much at home in the Jain milieu, and we can without further also consider it a Jain invention. Its fate in the Jain texts is a simple one of borrowing from author to author. Latter it appears in the sculptural panels and in Rudrabhatta (doubtful in the latter whether the observer is present) in conjunction not with the chain (2) of the Jain texts, but with a chain of the type (1) close to that of the Mahabharata. There has obviously been a crossing of the two sources. The inference that his is so is strengthened by the presence in the new sequence of animals of the snake of the Jain chain rather than the tiger of the Mahabharata-Hitopadesa chain. The rat of the Belur chain (has it been certainly identified) is not particularly appropriate as the victim of a snake large enough to be attacked by an elephant; the antelope or deer of Koramangala and Rudrabhatta is most appropriate as victim of a python. Note that these changes, together with the Hitopadesa author's changes and curtaliment, eliminate all vestiges of similarity between these two
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we
The Kota form of the story has motif [2]. Yet if we should attribute chain [3] to completely independent invention, should, I think, be going too far. At least two other possibilities can be found. The first is a line of descent either from the Jain tradition or from the Mysore tradition, with so many changes taking place in successive steps in the transmission that attribution to one or the other tradition is very difficult. The second possibility is that there is descent from one or the other tradition for motif [2], while only the knowledge that there should be a chain of animals was diffused, with a new knowledge that there should be a chain of animals was diffused, with a new invention of the details taking place to fill in the chain (Kroeber's 'stimulus diffusion', Americal Anthropologist 42 (1940), (1-20). A very minute examination of the Kota details may suggest a probable solution. The chain (3) is essentially: wormbird(s). The only thing similar to this in the Mysore tradition is the final (mythical) bird. In the Jain tradition, however, we have: frogsnake-bird. Can we allow that snake and worm are essentially related? For our purpose, it seems to me probable that the historical solution for the Kota chain should follow our first alternative above. The Jain tradition is that from which the Kota version stems; changes in the course of transmission have been violent, but we can see that the sequence snake-bird his been converted into worm-bird, with probably simultaneous loss of the now inappropriate frog, and then the one bird has been elaborated into there.
It is necessary to interpolate here a caution which was already uttered in Kota Texts, Part One, 7. Neither the Kotas, the Todas, nor the Badagas 'practise asceticism and withdrawal from the world as a form of religiosity'. They know of the Hindu-Jain institution, and stories containing reference to it are intelligible to them. As I said [8]
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