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MONKS, MONARCHS AND MATERIALISTS
575
However, still another (perhaps even more plausible) interpretation of 'Paesi' might be to relate it to the verb paesei (= pradeśayati), meaning either to point out, indicate, make known' or 'to urge, incite', as attested e.g. in OBh 64 (paesesum, see Vol. 2, p. 89: ...gomuttiyadaddhôisu bhunje ahavā paesesuṁ), and also paesaya (= pradeśaka) Thus Paesi' could mean either (1) 'inciter', i.e. someone who provokes a discussion or urges the monk Kesi to engage in a dispute, or (2) 'faultfinder', viz. 'some who indicates' inconsistencies in the Jaina doctrine that the soul is not the same as the body' (anno jīvo annaṁ sarīram). That meaning would be in keeping with the immediate setting and circumstances of the dialogue. However, there is an interesting hint found in the Artha-śāstra, where pradeśa belongs to the technical terminology of king's statecraft and politics in the meaning: *news received from informants as the indication of some event', viz. 'collected information', 'gathered evidence', 'intelligence', as in the examples: 'In conformity with this indication (with this intelligence collected from his informants), the king should inform the customs inspector about the size of the caravan in order to display his own infinite knowledge (AS 2.21.28: tena pradeśena rājā śulkâdhyaksasya sārtha-pramānam upadiset sarvajñatva-khyāpanârthanam) and 'In conformity with this indication (having this intelligence collected from his informants), the king should appeal to the citizens and country people (AS 5.2.33: etena pradeśena rājā paurajāna-padān bhikseta). All these semantic shades would imply: 'the one who points out in the sense of someone who makes use of background information (intelligence)' or of 'someone who has the collected evidence at his disposal. In any case it does appear that "Paesi' was not the original proper name of the local governor, and it was coined as an epithet, whereas his real historical name remains obscure.
Further (p. 8), BOLLÉE suggests that both Paesi and Pāyāsi might perhaps have had a common historical source in Occidental world: 'The experimental search for the soul seems to be expected rather from a Greek than from an Indian. Could, therefore, a foreign name be hidden behind desī words Paesi and Pāyāsi of whom a common etymology seems difficult?' It seems that the ground for this supposition is the conviction that the Indian mind was more prone to the observation of the world than to carrying experiments. Indeed, the accounts of experiments in India are relatively rare but not absolutely uncommon, as is confirmed by early accounts of experiments e.g. with salt, described in BAU 2.4.12 and ChU 6.13.1-3 (cf. also H.W. BODEWITZ (1991/92)). Another noteworthy example is found in
