Manuscript Illustrations Of Uttaradhyayana Sutra

Author(s): W Norman Brown
Publisher: American Oriental Society

Page 27

THE PAST CANNOT BE REASSEMBLED and still later he trained a farmer to be his own champion. When the fisherman and the farmer finally met, they fought two days without a decision, but on the third Attana's protegé smashed his opponent's head. Astana then went into retirement for his old age, but his relatives, despising him for his loss of strength, mistreated him until at last he secretly left his own city of Avanti for the city of Kausāmbi. There he took an elixir of youth and reëstablished himself as a wrestler, killing the royal champion; but the king was angry and did not praise him, saying that he had won only by accident, nor did the folk. Then Astana revealed himself, and was honored. Hereupon his family, hearing of his renewed strength and prosperity, came to share his wealth; but he realized that once he lost his strength again, they would again despise him. Considering all the weaknesses of old age, and the woes accompanying it, he decided to have nothing more to do with his relatives, and he entered the religious life. The moment shown in the illustration must be that when the rival wrestlers, the fisherman and the farmer, were in conflict, while Attana sits watching.
The lower register of DV's second painting (fig. 12) shows two men, well dressed, fighting with swords, which they hold as though they were daggers. The identification of the scene is not certain, but the subject is possibly an incident in the story of Agadadatta Cor, Agaladatta), cited in Devendra's commentary à propos of verse 6, which advises man to stay awake, though others sleep. The young hero sets out to catch a thief who has been terrorizing a city. He meets him one night, and joins with him in committing a robbery. As they leave with the swag, the thief tries to get Agadadatta to go to sleep, but the boy is too clever and slips away in the dark. The thief follows and the boy, hidden behind a tree, strikes with his sword; according to one version, he cuts the thief's shoulder; according to the other, he cuts off his legs below the knee. As the thief dies, he sends the boy to his sister, who in her turn tries to kill him by operating a mechanical device that drops a stone on his bed. But the boy is again on guard, being especially aware that women are deceitful, and escapes. The painting shows Agadadatta fighting with the thief, the tree perhaps being that behind which Agadadatta stood. The bundle on the ground may be the booty.
The painting of JM (fig. 13) illustrates the story of the wrestler Attana (see above) more fully than the painting of DV (fig. 12). Six fighters appear in two registers of three each, bearing round weapons in their hands, presumably to give more violence to their blows.
In HV (fig. 11) a painting illustrates brief stories told in the commentary to verses 2 and 3. Verse 2 says: "Those men who accumulate wealth by evil deeds and through adherence to false principles will be caught in their own snares, bound by their own hatred, and will go to hell.” In the lower register of the picture we have the story of the robber who had a deep well in which he concealed his plunder. He would marry a wife, but when she conceived he would kill her and throw her body down the well. But once he allowed a very beautiful and dear wife to live, and she bore him a son. When the boy was eight, the robber determined to kill both the mother and the child, and he threw them down the well; but the child's cries were heard by the folk, who passed the word on to the
Devendra's text is published in H. Jacobi, Ausgewählte Erzählungen in Māhārāshtri (Leipzig, 1886), p. 73 ff., and translated in J. J. Meyer, Hindu Tales (London, 1909), p. 238 ff. The story is a variant of that of Agaladatta: text in Jacobi, op. cit., p. 66 ff.; translation in Meyer, op. cit., p. 229 f.