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The Tale of the Royal Monk Yava
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quite without relevance, should be learnt. Anything that is learnt. is never useless. Once such learning proved so beneficial as to save someone's life.
In the BỊhat-kathākoša version 14 of Yava's tale, representing the Digam bara tradition, we find some significant differences as compared to the BKS version of Kșemakirti. Here the king Yava himself confines his daughter in a dungeon, as he was afraid that, as predicted by a monk, the kingship will pass on to that man who will marry her. His loss of words and humbling of pride of a monk leads him to give up his kingdom and become monk. Feeling humiliation and frustration at his failure to memorize the sacred texts, he goes out to visit holy places. On his way, seeing the donkeys dragging a cart to and fro in their attempt to eat corn from the roadside field Yava utters a verse15 spontaneously
osed (under divine inspiration of Vālmiki !) to describe the situation. Similarly witnessing the boys looking for the lost tip-cat and the frog appearing and running away timidly, the inspired Yava produces two more verses. These verses he uses as texts for his daily religious observances. In the Bịhathkathākośa tale, Yava composes one more verse in this fashion. Enlightened by the waterfetching ladies, he learns that due to recurrent friction with waterpots tiny pits developed even on the stony surface of the steps of a well. So he feels he should not despair of memorizing the sacred texts. He produces the fourth verse with this purport, and returns to his city where his guru was staying for the time being. The rest of the tale is similar to what we find in the BKS Commentary, except two details : As he hears the second verse recited by Yava, Gardabha thinks that thereby his father wants to inform him about his sister, and at the end, both Gardabha and Dirgha get pardoned (but Sricandra gets the minister banished).
6. Most of the differences of the Digam bara version from the Svetāmbara version (as we have it in the BKS commentary) can be quite reasonably interpreted as later features. Similarly, the Müsika Jätaka version, which stands far apart from the Jaina: versions is clearly a secondary reworking of the old material. The
