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The Tale of the Royal Monk Yava
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3. From the structure and motivation of this tale the following points are to be noted :
(a) Someone comes to learn by hearing on different occasions verses composed and recited on the spur of the moment. Each of these verses is related to some key incident in a particular situation, the several separate situations being mutually quite unconnected, but appearing in a chronological sequence. The learner is generally an onlooker and not involved in these situations.
(b) Subseqvently in a totally different situation, he happens to utter these remembered verses loudly to himself. By sheer chance, and without the utterer's knowledge, the verses happen to get
ted and apply to the new situation--they are so interpreted and considered intentional by someone else present there. This results in warding off unsuspected danger to the utterer's life.
(c) The double application or interpretation of the verses is made possible on the strength of some words having double meaning therein, and especially because a few of these are such that they function as common nouns in the previous situations, but as proper nouns-as personal names, to be more specific-in the subsequent new situation.
4. In his Ākhyānaka-maņikośa (circa last quarter of the 11th Cent. A.D.) Nemicandra has alluded to the example of the monk Yava to illustrate the secular and spiritual merits of performing sajjhāya8. Besides giving the usual interpretation of sajjhāya (svādhyāyal as ‘reading and learning the secred texts'. Āmradeva has in his commentary on this verse of Nemicandra given also a narrow interpretation, viz., the regular and repeated recitation of the namaskāra-mantra. And the version of Yava's tale he has given, has been provided an additional motivation accordingly. Āmradeva's version very closely resembles that of Ksemakirti (which most probably represents the original version known to Sanghadāsa). But there are a few significant differences, indicating a different direct source that had altered somewhat the details and motivations of its original. The motivation for kidnapping Adoliyā is changed
