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STUDIES IN INDIAN LINGUISTICS
The difficulties in interpreting this pāda can be overcome with less cffort if we assume that the Pali translator of the original canon in the castern dialect misunderstood the gathā word kilesa- as standing for Pāli kilesa-, Skt. klesa.. Actually, it seems to have represented a contraction kilcse = Pāli kir' eso? where eso stands for the kinnara standing beside the kinnari, and kil ese has nothing to do with klesa. The last two quarters of the gātha in the eastern dialect of the original canon probably ran as: dubbhäsitam (or -dan?) sankamäne kilese, tasmā tunhi kirpulise na balya, which the Pāli translator should havc rendered as dubbhāsi'aṁ sarkumāno kir' eso, tasmă tunhi kimpuriso, na balyā, “This one, indeed, (i.e. the kinnara) is afraid of (uttering) bad speech; therefore the kinnara is silent, and not due to stupidity.” The kinnari, by uttering this gathā, tried to achieve two purposes. She wanted to prove to the king that she was no ordinary crcature; and further, to plead in behalf of her husband and explain reasonably his silence. She probably thought that this would enable her to secure the release of both of them, and that the king would not demand further proof from her husband to show that he was also a kinnara. But the Páli translator was misled by the word kilese of the original canon and rendered the line mechanically into Pāli without worrying for the meaning. Or, he understood it in some such way as "Fearing that calamity occurs due to bad speech (dubbhåsitam = dubbhāsita kile80 hotiti samkamino), the kinnara has remained silent." Later, some one who construed samkamano kileso, instead of saíkamano kimpuriso, and interpreted the former in some such way as done by the commentator, changed kimpuriso (sg.) to kimpurisā (pl.) in order to make it applicable to both the kinnaras who had remained silent. The reading kimpuriso, presumed in the interpretation suggested above, is in fact supported by one manuscript. This interpretation involves only one emendation kimpuriso for kimpurisā; and it spares us from the necessity of having to interpret kilesa (= klesa) in a non-Buddhistic sense.
When the king heard the gāthā of the kinnari he ordered her release; but he said that the kinnara, who had not yet spoken, should be roasted and served at breakfast. The kinnara therefore thought it was time for him also to speak and recited three gāthīs, the first (No. 10) of which ran as follows:
pajjunnandthā pasavo, pasunatha ayar pajā, tvamnātho 'smi mahārija, natho 'ham bhariyaya ca, dvinnam añiñataram ñatvā mutto gaccheyya pabbatam.
The last two quarters of this gāthă also are difficult. Lüders translates the gāthā as: “The cattle depend on the god of rain, these beings on the cattle. On you, oh great king, I depend: on me, my wife depends. One of us when released, could only go into the mountains, after having known that the other
6. "Dem Kanon der buddhistischen Schriften im Pāli und im Sanskrit liegt ein Urkanon Zugrunde, der in einem östlichen Dialekt abgefasst war.," SB4W, 1927, p. 123, cited in Lüders, Beobachtungen über die Sprache des budhistichen Utkanons, p. 8, 1054.
7. "Die Partikel, die im Sk. stets kila lautet, ist im Pāli in der gesamten Literatur ikra". Luders, Beobachtungen § 31, p. 85.
8. About --> -d in the eastern dialect. see Lüders, Beobachtungen $ 04 - 98 (esp. 308), pp. 81-88. 8. ck; c' gives kimpurise.
Madhu Vidya/305
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