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This trișttubh ought to have been spoken before the robber left the queen, in fact (I cannot see why, if not due to influence of the Pali version or its forerunner) our text cites it after the flight of the robber. The corresponding Pali sloka is better adapted to the situation :
Having taken all the goods you have crossed to the other side, oh brāhmaṇa.
Come back quickly; instantly you must let me too cross the river now.32 The resemblance between both versions of the first half of the next tristubh is close, but here the Prakrit text shows a difficulty in its wording : it is hard to understand the form mellevi in pada b; we would expect a passive form of the verb millai, mellai=muốcati. So perhaps it will be allowed to read mellāvio va instead of the transmitted akşaras mellevitāva. The form jāņeppi in pāda c surely is the absolutive, actually an Apabhramsa form (cf. PISCHEL, Prakrit Grammar $ 588) and consequently indicating a more recent poetry if compared with vv. 5 and 7. The robber answers in the Prakrit text :
He who was (your) intimate since long is forsaken for the sake of another made intimate through a lie, he who is reliable for the sake of an unreliable. Knowing your innate behaviour which reasonable man could trust you ? (Verse 9, for the text see below).
In the Pali version the robber's word are :
For the sake of me the not intimate you exchanged your intimate, my lady, for the sake of the unreliable, the reliable one; me too, my lady, you might
exchange for the sake of another man,-- I shall go far away from here. 28 If we compare both version of these stanzas a difference jumps to the eye : while in the Āvasyaka text the vv. 8 seq. are triştubhs, in the Jātaka only the meter of v. 2 is triştubh v. 1 being a sloka. However, the couple of verses forming a dialogue between the woman and the robber can be expected to have been composed originally in the same meter. It might be too bold to recommend the one or the other of the possible assumptions about the original shape of the tale, 24 The triştubh verse of the jātaka is transmitted also as verse 4 of the Kaņaverajātaka (no. 318, cf. note 7, supra),25 here forming the concluding stanza after a series of slokas. Has it replaced in jātaka 374 an original sloka ? The remaining stanzas of this jātaka all are slokas.
HERTEL already had compared the vv. 4 seq. of jātaka 374 with vv. II 635 seq. of Hemachandra's Parisistaparvan; the older model which Hemachandra made use of and which we possess in the Avasayaka tradition (vv. 10 and 11, belonging to the sixth part of the story ) is more closely connected with those Pali verses. The woman says in the jätaka :
Oh jackal, you foolish, you stupid, unwise are you, oh jackal (jambuka ). Having lost fish and flesh seeming wretched you stand reflecting 28 70
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