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CHILDHOOD OF KHĀRAVELA
301
The explanation given in the Amarakosha is more suitable as meaning of beautiful reddish body'. Hence, it is with these bodily qualities that Khāravela has been mentioned as spending the first fifteen years of his life in playing games befitting the young age of a prince (kumārakīdīkā)."
That pasatha-sub ha-lakhana and the other adjectives are meant, in the Hāthigumphā inscription, to represent Khāravela as a king overloard is beyond any dispute. For in the inscription of the Chief Queen, Khāravela has been freely represented as 'Kalinga-chakravarti' i. e. the king overlord of Kalinga. But this is not enough to bring out the real significance of the two epithets, according to Dr. Barua. As used in the first paragraph of the Hāthigumphā text, the epithets signify that the expert astrologers, palmists and diviners (Lakhana-pațiggāhakā; Nakkhatta pāțhakā), after reading the bodily marks and making a thorough study of the birth-star and other factors and signs connected with the birth and the person of the child-prince Khāravela, declared him to be a king overlord in future.
1. Dr. V. 8. Agarwal explained to the present author the word kadara (Skt: karka) as meaning 'white'. He opines that a person with kıdara-sarira is one who from his very birth possesses white body with white hair, white eye-lids, and so on, that is to say, a perfectly white person. In Banaras, local people call such a person as Sūraja-mukhi', while in the Punjabi language, he is styled as "Kakkada'. But whether such a person was thought to be auspicious at all cannot be said with certainty. At the present day, in so far as the knowledge of the present author goes, such a person is thought to be inauspicious.
2. Rev, Pt. Sukhlalji compares Kumāra-kīļā with sisukrīdā in the Kādambari and that in the Vätsyāyana's Kāmsūtra.
3. Luder's List No. 1316 ; SI, Vol. I, pp. 213-14.
4. In the Nidāna Kathā (Fauebolls Jātaka, I, p. 56) the future of Siddbārtha is represented on the basis of his bodily marks as declared by the astrologers and diviners.
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