________________
174
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[JUNE 7, 1872.
horse (though certainly transformed into an ele- phant) in Buddhaghosa's Comm. on the Dham- mapada. Just as so many Æsopic fables have found a place in the Jâtaka-collection, which forms a part of the sacred Tipitaka,t so also from various other sources, western tales, Sagas and ther forms of nonlar thought have found
their way into India by means of that direct intercourse with the Greeks to which we have already referred. The Saga of the kidnapping of Ganymedes appears indeed to have found admission into an Upanishad belonging to the Rigveda. And perhaps we can point to certain elements of the same kind even in the Ramayana
Shile his with her questiouch dirlandied in to opport
time. Selaiselfeve distingued, hedhin
de speaks ourning for yone, makes hiv 220-225,
Paraod those coled out a
the fact certainly poweudotubes of thes to Morsially affect
and Vijaya spent the night with her there (Od X, 347); while his companions slept around him outside. While he was thus with her on the couch, he heard singing and music, and in reply to his questions, she told him what was the state of affairs, and gave him such directions as would enable him to make himself master of the island ; and by means of her counsel and with her help, he succeeded in this. After & time, however, he put her away a gain, when the opportunity presented itself of winning "a queen consort of equal rank to himself" in the daughter of the Pandav -king of Madhurâ; and the Yak khini met her death by the hand of one of her Yakkha relations, enraged at her on account of her treachery.-With regard to this story, I remark that the word surufiga (augoy according to Benfey) used in v. 14, is of itself sufficient to demonstrate, what indeed requires no further proof, the existence of Greek influences in the time at which the Maldoro WAS composed : Cf. Ind. Streifen IT, 845. Though this coincidence cannot indeed be directly made use of for deterinin ing the relations that exist between the above legend and that which is found in the Odyssey, seeing that the word query, "underground passage" is not used either in the corresponding portion of the latter work, or elsewhere at all in the poem, still it is certainly & significant circumstance that in a story which has so many points of resemblance with one in the Odyssey, we should find a word which can be easily recognised as Greek, though altered in form through the influence of oral tradition. The difficulties which prevented Turnour (Introd. p. xliv) from recognising in the story told in the Mahávanso an echo of the Homeric Saga certainly do not exist for us.
• Vide Fausböll, p. 158; and in Rogers, Buddhaghosa's Parables, p. 39. In the same way, too, may be easily explained those correspondences with the Odyssey which Schott has pointed out as existing in the later Mongolian version of the Saga of Geser Khan (Abh. d. K. A. d. w. zu Berlin, for the year 1851, p. 279, or p. 17 of the separate impression) : see also Julg in the Verhandlungen der Würzburger Philologen Versammlung (1868), p. 58-71. (A Tibetic recension of the same has recently, (800 Schiefner in the Melanges Asiatiques of the Peteral. Acad. V. 47, 1868) come into the possession of E. Schlagintweit; but so far as I am aware nothing more nearly relating to this subject has yet been published.) The Indian account, corresponding to the story of the Trojan horse, of the artificial elephant inside of which a number of warriors were secreted for the purpose of effecting the capture of king Udayana, appears to have formed also the subject of a drama, devoted to the fortunes of this king : vide Sahityadarpana, 122: yatha Udayanacharite kilifinjhastiprayogah.
† Cf. Ind. Stud. III. 356. In Buddhaghosa, too (Pausböll, Dhamm. p. 419) an Æsopic fable is found that of the flight of the tortoise through the air (cf. Ind. Stud. III. 339).
1 On this subject, compare, for instance, what I have said in the Zeitschr. der Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellsch. XIV. 269, in the Monatsberichte der Akademie for the year 1869, p. 39 ff., and in the Ind. Streifen I, 126. II, 368. Perhaps we should class also with these materials the parable quoted by M. Muller in his paper on Buddhist Nihilism, p. 19, from Buddbaghosa's Comm. on the Dhammapada, of the mother mourning the death of her only son, whom Buddha comforted by bidding her bring him as a medicine that would procure the boy's restoration to life, & grain of mustard-seed it from a house in which neither & Bon, nor a father, nor a slave had died." The fruitless search brought home to her the passing nature of all earthly things, and raised her above her individual sorrow. This parable, which M.M. calla" a test of true Buddhism," appears in Lucian's Demonax, Cap. 25, (Paris : 1840 ed. Dindorf, p. 381), identical in substance, but so far changed in form, that Demonax. whom Lucian speaks of as his contemporary, promised the
philosopher Herodes, in similar circumstances, that his child would be restored to life " it he would only name to him three inen, who had never mourned for any one (as dead)" ( boy T TGES TIVAS &
v ous voudou, μηδε τίποτε τεπινθηκότας, Similarly also the emperor Juliu, in his 37th epistle (ed. Heyler, Mainz, 1828, P. 64, 66, 341), in which he seeks to console his friend Amerios (var. 1. Himerios) on the death of his young wife, tells the same story, in this form, that Democritus of Abdera promised Darius to resto a life to his dead spouse, if he should succeed in finding, the sughout his wide dominions, three names of persons who had not yet been called to mourn (τριών απενθήτων ονόματα ; ποπιίπα triιιπι γυας nemo lucisset, Heylur translates ; but according to the coutext, this is is decidedly incorrect). The imperial letterwriter alludes als to the herb that banishes sorrow" (pa Makoy is in the Odyssey IV, 220-225, wbich, mixed in the wine of any one, makes him for an entire day forget his mourning for mother, father, brother, and son and he speaks of his story as being to his friend probably not strange, though to the most of people, as he believes, unknown" (aropos sinw Topo kuboy, Tid) abryoy dann, soi py iows Gù Eirov, Tois Thiodi di istixos ayud Tor). Buddhaghosa wrote about 420 A. D., consequently about 60 years after the emperor Julian (d, 368), and some 250 years after Lucian. If therefore any connection is to be looked for here, which can hardly indeed be called in question, the probability of the borrowing having taken place from the West is certainly greater than, or is, at all events, as kreat asthat of the con verse supposition, and this opinion is not materially affected by the circumstance that, according to Mor. Haupt's kind comunication regarding both of these passages, the" Dewomax" is really a peudo-Lucianic work for the emperor's letter is certainly genuine, and at the same time it appeals to the fact that although the story in question was to most people unknown," yet it was probably not new" to the person addressed an evident proof that it had come down from an earlier time, though to be sure the assertion of the connection of the story with Darius or with Democritus (in whose biography in Diogenes Laertius, according to Heyler p. 842, nothing of the kind is to be found) has no claim to be received as true. And besidea, 49 M. M's sccount is not taken direct from the Pali text, but from the Burmese translation of the same, translated into Englisla by Capt. Rogers (vide p. 100, 101 of his book), it is quite natural to expect that an investigation of the original might show that it stands in a still closer relation to the Greek form of the story (the corresponding section is unfortunately not given in Fausboll's extraets from Buddhaghosa's Commentary: vide ibid p. 289;a legend of similar import, however, is found at p. 359, 860). In fact we have already seen that Buddhaghows shows an acquaintance with Greek elements from other sources also. At all events, just as the legenda regarding Christ that were current in the ninth or tenth centuries of the Christian era have little weight with reference to the time at which Christ lived, if they are not supported by evidence from cther sources, so these legends of Buddhaghosa's, which occupy, almost throughcut, the standpoint of the most credulous supersution, and give evidence of the full development of Buddhist doctrine, have a little claim eo ipso to be regarded as "parables of Mahinda, if nor of Buddha himself an opinion toward which M. Mullet evidently leans, in his preface to Capt. Rogers' book, p. xvii), so long as this conclusion is not supported by other evidence out of the Tipitaka itself ; though indeed they often enough refer at least to the sutla, jataka, attkakatha, &c. That they contain much legendary matter that is really ancient, and of the highest value, I do not mean for a moment to deny and in regard to their antiquity, Fausboll himself has pointed out that they seem to be borrowed in part from an ancient metrical version (1. c. p. 99).
Vide Ind. Stud. IX, 41.
enosti by evide, which
