Makaranda Madhukar Anand Mahendale Festshrift

Author(s): M A Dhaky, Jitendra B Shah
Publisher: Shardaben Chimanbhai Educational Research Centre

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Siegfried Lienhard
Makaranda
two arrive in Taksasilā, the witch makes her small son disappear and waits, radiating in the sheen of her beauty, in front of the house where the king's son has found lodging. It so happens that the king of Takşaśilā just then comes past. He is blinded by the witch's charms and learns that the beautiful lady is the wife of a prince who has just come to Takşaśilā. The king now has the stranger to his city summoned but, like the people in the forest, does not believe the prince's words. He invites the beautiful woman into his palace, passes an evening in her company and finally, exhausted from the joys of love, falls into sleep. The witch immediately fetches her companions. While she eats the king up, her female comrades exterminate the remaining being in and around the palace. Since bones are lying in front of the palace the next day and the palace gate remains closed, the subjects come together and elect as their king the prince who had remained steadfast in spite of all temptations.
It is interesting to note that individual elements of the fable just depicted are also met with in the account of the colonization of Sri Lanka, as rendered in two important chronicles of Ceylon composed in Pāli, the Mahāvaṁsa and, in shorter format, the Dīpavamsa'. As these two works based on the historical tradition of old commentaries (atthakathā) report, the daughter of a king once coupled with a lion in India, and out of this unusual bond came both a son, Sīhabāhu (Skt. Simhabāhu), who later became king of Lāļa, this native land, and Sīvalī, a daughter. From the marriage of these · two siblings sprang at last Vijaya, a surely prince and the eldest of a total of
32 brothers, whom Sihabahu presently banned, placing him, together with seven hundred families, on an ocean-going ship with distant destination. After many adventures, Vijaya and his men reached the island of Sri Lanka, at the time populated only by snakes and various kinds of demonic beings, above all räksasas and yaksas. Near the yaksa-city Sirīsavatthu, Vijaya meets a dangerous yaksinī, a threat to his people, who later, after the two have dined together, turns herself into a beautiful 16-year-old girl. At her command Vijaya destroys numerous yakşas and afterwards takes up residence in the city he himself has founded, Tambapanni (Tāmraparnī), together with his yaksa wife and his men, who call themselves—after Sihabāhu—Sihalas (Skt. Sīmhala). Two children come out of this marriage, but hostile yaksas kill his