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The Bṛhatkatha and the Bhāgavata
popular theme in Tamil poetry that originated in the custom of presenting girls with a leaf-frock at puberty (Entwhistle, 1987, p. 36, fn. 69), first advanced by Hardy and corroborated by Emeneau requires reconsideration.
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3. The absence of the episode of Vastraharana in the pre-Bhāgavata Puranic Kṛṣṇa myths and its occurence in the Vaḍḍakaha and the Bhagavata provides us with some food for speculation. On the basis of archaeological evidence we know that the 'Ganga king Durvinita, assigned to the sixth century A. D., had prepared a Sanskrit version of the Vaḍḍakaha. (Raghavan, 1963, p. 844). The stealing of clothes figuring in the Teṇṭākarāla story which was quite likely present in that early Southern Sanskrit recast was possibly the immediate source of the Vastraharaṇa episode of the Bhāgavata. This inference finds a support from another interesting episode we find in the Kṛṣṇacarita of the Bhāgavata.
4. Visnu Purana 5, 13, 31-42 describe how Kṛṣṇa disappeared just when the Rasa dance was to start and how the agitated Gopis wandering in the woodland in search of Kṛṣṇa came to notice the latter's footsprints. They pursued the track and from the condition of these footprints, and of the other smaller ones by their side, the Gopis made precise inferences about some favourite Gopi that accompanied Kṛṣṇa: Kṛṣṇa had plucked a bunch of flowers and adorned her with it. She felt proud. Kṛṣṇa repulsed her and went away leaving her pining. This Viṣṇu Purāṇa episode we find much more developed in the Bhagavata, where there is a meticulous description of the process of deductions. From various signs, the Gopis make surmises about Kṛṣṇa carrying her sweetheart, adorning her with flowers and making love to her. The Gopis continuing their pursuit arrived at the place where they found Krsna's once favourite lamenting her fate. (Bhāgavata, 10, 30 Kṛṣṇānveṣaṇa).
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To
Now this episode has a very close parallel to an episode in the autobiographical account of Carudatta, occurring in the Gandharvadatta Lambha of the Vasudevahimdi (pp. 135-138). There Carudatta and his friends picnicing on the bank of a river 'notice
