Madhuvidya

Author(s): S D Laddu, T N Dharmadhikari, Madhvi Kolhatkar, Pratibha Pingle
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 608

60
REVIEWS
and āsīvisa. The commentator was forced to explain away somehow eļamūgan as he took it to be an adjective of uragam. The instances col. lected by LUEDERS in article $ 47, however, show that elamūga at all places means 'a fool' and that it is used to characterise human beings and not animals. The present occurrence cannot be regarded as a solitary exception to the general use and hence it seems very likely that originally the word stood in the Gathā as a vocative elamūga, an adjective of Brāhmaṇa.
Addressing the Brāhmaṇa as elamuga 'a fool' agrees well with the fact that in the Jätaka story the mind of the Brāhmaṇa was-worried about the possible cause of his own death or that of his wife when he was himself unknowingly carrying a serpent in his bag. In Gāthā 1 he is, therefore, thus described-vibbhantacitto kupitindriyo si, DUTOIT—"Verwirrt ist dir der Geist, ängstlich der Sinn" (whence also the commencement of the Jätaka vibbhantacitto ti). The Gātha in which elamūgaṁ occurs reads as :
ādāya dandaṁ parisumbha bhastani, pass' elamūgan uragam dijivham/ chind' ajja kaṁkham vicikicchitāni,
bhujangamam passa, pamunca bhastañ// DUTOIT, “Nimm einen Stock und schlage auf den Ranzen;
du siehst die Schlange geifernd, doppelzüngig. Gib heute auf die ängstlichkeit, den Zweifel; sieh auf die Schlange, öffne deinen Ranzen !"
But as suggested above elamügan should be read as elamuga 'oh fool' referring to the Brāhmaṇa. elamūga (voc.) was subjected to the corruption elamūgan (acc.) possibly because the metre required the fifth syllable to be long and also because the two words uragan dijivhan following elamuga were acc. sg. LUEDERS himself has put forward ($ 125, p. 103) a somewhat similar suggestion while explaining ajakaran occurring in Jātaka 427.2. He suggests that ajakaraṁ may be regarded as a metrical emendation for ajakara- (just as in the present case it has been suggested to treat the reading elamūgań as a metrical error for eļamūga).
But the commentator's explanation interests us for another reason. How did he come to explain the latter part of the compound elamūga with the use of the word mukha? For that speaks the v.l. elamukha which is the same as eļamukha. Shall we therefore suppose that the commentator had before him the reading ebamukha and hence he offered a curious explanation of the word with the use of the word mukha? Actually, however, this eļamukha in writing must have represented elamukkha (< eda
Madhu Vidyā/583