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the Gathả himself, was not dumb. That he was not dumb has been aiready asserted in the first quarter of the second line, and now the word mūga coming again in the second quarter must have been used to deny some other supposed drawback in the prince. That this drawback was nothing but his feigned acting as a fool (hence here müga= mūrkha) is shown by the very first Gathā in this Jätaka where a goddess advised the prince to behave as
ma pandicciyan vibhāvaya, balamato bhava sabbapāninan/
sabbo tan jano ocināyatu, evan tava attho bhavissati// DUTOIT, "Nicht deine Weisheit lasse sehen,
als Tor werde geschätzt bei allen Wesen. Das ganze Volk soll dich verachten;
so wird dein Zweck dir in Erfüllung gehen." Similarly Gathā 4 tells us that the prince was not only taken to be physically disabled but also as acetasa unvernünftig. Later, when it was discovered that the prince was not really as he pretended to be, he was called pa ñ ñ o 'weis'. These references clearly show that the prince for some years not only behaved like deaf, dumb, and crippled but also as a fool.12 That is the reason why having denied crippleness, deafness and dumbness in the first three quarters of the Gātha, he asked the charioteer not to mistake him for a fool (mā man mūgan(= mūrkhan)adharayi) in the last quarter of the Găthā.
Now that the meaning of mūga = mürkha has been ascertained for Gathā 33, it may be examined if in some of the other Gāthăs also in this Jātaka müga means not 'dumb' but 'fool'. In Gāthà 4 where mūga and acetasa both occur, müga definitely stands for müka 'dumb'. But in Gathā 38 where only mūga and pakkha occur, though the prince had shown in all four deficiencies, it is possible that pakkha stands for the three physical disabilities (mūga, badhira, and pakkha), and that muga stands for the mental one alone viz. foolishness (cf. amūgo mūgavannena, apakkho pakkhasammato). In Gāthā 58 we read na so mugo na so pakkho, vissatthavacano ca so. Here if we do not regard vissatthavacano as a further elaboration of na so mūgo (mūko), then that expression alone
12. The prose portion immediately preceding Găthä 1 tells us that the goddess told the prince to act as a fool by taking recourse to the three physical deficiencies of crippleness, deafness, and dumbness apithasappi yeva pithasappi viya hoki. abadhiro badhiro viya hohi, amūgo va mūgo viya hohi (printed as hoti), imāni tini angani adhitthaya panditabhāvar må pakāsayi (DUTOIT, "..... So werde, obwohl du kein verwachsener krüppel bist, wie ein verwachsener krüppel; obwohl du nicht stumm bist, sei, als wärest du stumm; obwohl nicht taub, stelle dich taub. Indem du diese drei Merkmale zeigst, verrate nicht deine weisheit.")
Madhu Vidyā/585
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