Life and Stories of Jaina Savior Parcvanatha

Author(s): Maurice Bloomfield
Publisher: Maurice Bloomfield

Page 75

The thief who was doomed to die like Absalom
61
A dog 36 urinated into the Brahman's hand, who said, * Thank you!', as he rose with a start. The thief reflected that such was the Brahman's greed (for alms) that it persisted even while he was asleep; he, therefore, must not steal there (639).
He then decided to eschew mean folks; and broke into the king's palace. There he saw the king resting with his queen on a couch. As he stood there, intending to rob, a serpent came thru a hole in the door, bit the hand of the queen that hung outside the bed, and glided away. Greatly astonished, he forgot his own business, and silently followed the serpent to the ground floor. There the serpent took on the form of a great bull, and with a roar proceeded to kill the keeper of the main door of the palace.37 The thief caught hold of the bull's tail, and asked him who he was, why he had come here, and what he would do next. The bull replied in a human voice, that he was the servant of Yama; 38 that he had come, at his command, to kill the queen and the doorkeeper; and that on the next day the architect of the new palace of the king would fall from one of its turrets. The thief then made the bull tell him how he himself would die. Reluctantly the bull informed him that he would die hanging on the branch of a banyan tree which stood on the king's highway. The thief then let go the bull's tail. Next day the architect died, as predicted; the thief, afright over his own impending death, went to a distant village, and
» The text reads khunå for çună.
37 pratoll means the main street of a town'; pratoli-dvåra, the gate opening upon that street.'
"See the story, Lord of Death,' in Steel and Temple, Legends of the Panjab, pp. 207 ff. (same as Wide-Awake Stories, pp. 219 ff.); R. S. Mukharji, Indian Folk-Lore, pp. 92 ff.; McCulloch, Bengali Household Tales, pp. I ff. Serpent as messenger of death as early as Mahābh. 13. 1. 35.