Life and Stories of Jaina Savior Parcvanatha

Author(s): Maurice Bloomfield
Publisher: Maurice Bloomfield

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Life and Stories of Pārçvanātha
Story of the thief who was destined to die like Absalom.
Unavertable fate 34
The text turns to the third of the five light vows (aņuvrata), namely abstention from theft (verse 46), picturing forcibly its wickedness. Worse than murder, it causes death alive; it defiles as the touch of a Mātanga even with a finger, and so on. Then follows illustration by story: In Çrīpura ruled a king, Mānamardana. A young man of good family and well educated, Mahābala by name, gradually lost his relatives, began to lead a dissolute life, and, from a gambler, became a thief. Once he went by night to steal in the house of a merchant named Datta. As he peeked into the house thru a lattice-window, he saw Datta quarrelling bitterly with his son over some trifling disagreement of accounts.86 Out of decency he reflected, that a man who would abandon sleep in the middle of the night, and quarrel with his diligent and proper son over such a trifle, would die of a broken heart, if he were to steal his property. So he went to the house of a hetaera, Kāmasenā. He saw her lavish her professional ministrations upon a leprous slave, as tho he were a god. He decided that he could not afford to steal from any one as greedy for money as all that (626). Then he went to the house of a Brahman and saw him sleeping with his wife on a couch.
"The notion that specific fate, or fate imposed by supernatural power, is unavertable is a fruitful psychic motif of fiction: Mahābhārata 1. 41. I ff.; Hitopadeca in Braj Bhākhā 4, 3 (Hertel, Das Pañcatantra, p. 56, with parallels); Nirmala Pathaka 2. 6 (Hertel, ib., p. 283); Kathākoça, pp. 147-157; Dhammapada Commentary 9. 12; Ralston, Tibetan Tales, pp. 273 ff. Cf. ZDMG. lxv. 434 ff., 440, 441, 449.
Unintelligible words: viçopakāikasyā 'melato lekhyake, an account not agreeing by a single visopaka (?). The word vigopaka occurs in Răuhiņeya Carita; see p. 233.