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Prakrit and Apabhramśa Studies
some foot-prints on the sandy beach. From, the shapes and from the conditions and surroundings of the footprints which they follow they cleverly make several very detailed deductions : The footsprints were those of a Vidyadhara, who carried her human sweetheart in his arms; the latter had requested her lover to pluck for her a bunch of flowers of the Saptaparna tree on their way; the woman was offended by the Vidyadhara, who then won her over and carried her to a creeper bower, where they made love.
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We cannot miss the very close resemblance between these episodes from the Bhagavata and the Vasudevahimḍi.
Now the Vasudevahimḍi is a Jain recast of some version of the Bṛhatkatha. The fact that the story of Carudatta occurs also in Budhasvamin's Bṛhatkatha-sloka-samgraha (9, 8-46: the story of Sānudāsa), the earliest available Sanskrit version of the Bṛhatkatha, assures us about the occurrence of that story in the early Bṛhatkathā tradition. It seems to me that the Bhagavatakara moulded the episode of Kṛṣṇānveṣaṇa on the incident we find in the story of Sānudāsa (Carudatta) in the Bṛhatkatha and he possibly utilized the Southern Sanskrit version of Durvinita.
5. The motif of intelligently arriving at correct deductions (in a modern detective-like fashion) through sharp observation of trifling marks and objects is greatly popular in all the folktale traditions. According to Thompson's Motif Index, it is motif no. J. 1661.1. To note only a few occurrences from Classical Indian literature (1) The Pali Jataka tale No. 432 Pada-kusalamāṇava-jātaka. (2) The illustration of that type of trained intelligence (vainayiki-buddhi) which one acquires by studying nimitta (i.e. making deductions from telltale marks, etc.), as we find in the commentarial literature on the Avasyaka-sūtra of the Jain Canon (e.g. in the tippana (12th Century) of Śricandra on Haribhadra's commentary on the Nandi-Sutra, verse 64). This tale has found a place in Arabian tale collections and spread to various regions.
