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330
Paul Dundas
Jambu-jyoti
The story in question is one of the most cynical in Sanskrit narrative literature. It involves a weaver, his adulterous wife and her gobetween, a barber's wife. The two women have changed places to deceive the weaver and enable his wife to go and meet her lover. In a fit of drunken rage, the weaver mutilates the gobetween, thinking it was his wife, by cutting off her nose. The weaver's wife returns and the wretched gobetween goes back home with her nose in her hands. When the weaver, having emerged from his stupor, starts to upbraid his wife again, she, who is of course unmutilated, performs a spurious act of truth to convince him of her chastity : "To hell with you, evil man ! Who is capable of mutilating me, an extremely virtuous woman ? Hear me, guardian deities of the directions If I have not known even in my thoughts any man other than the husband I married when young, then by this truth (anena satyena) let my face become whole.”26 The result is that the weaver on seeing his faithless wife's face, nose and all, is duped into reconciliation with her.
Falk, in his study of the sources of the Pañcatantra, has shown how the original author of the text (whether or not he was a brahman called Visnuśarman) adopted ethically positive stories and themes from the Jātaka collection and the Mahābhārata but adapted and reshaped them to fit a new narrative context of cynical and selfish worldly wisdom and counteracting quickwittedeness27. The episode of the weaver and his wife, while not referred to by Falk, exemplifies this excellently. Here we have an almost audacious reversal of the act of truth theme designed to demonstrate the cleverness of the wicked and the gullibility of the slowwitted. Its force in the Pañcatantra, or at least this version of it, could only come from a prior familiarity with earlier "standard" examples of acts of truth employing the word satya and intended to effect a miraculous result through affirmation of a moral or religious truth.
The Jain Purnabhadra's version, while not in any way squeamish about the narrative theme, does away with the specific invocation of truth found in Edgerton's reconstructed version and instead makes the weaver's wife ascribe the "miracle" to the gods of the directions being compelled to restore her nose by the power of her chastity28. In this respect, Pūrnabhadra seems to follow the structure of the acts of truth found in the Brhatkathākośa and Nānapamcamikahão described above.
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