________________
100
NARRATIVE TALE IN JAIN LITERATURE
"Only because of the game of dice." "How, are you a gambler?" "Am I not, after all, the son of a slave mother?"17
XIV
THE STORY OF BHIMASENA The story of Bhimasena as told in the Satruñjaya-māhātmya
(book X) by Dhanesvara.
A merchantman vessel, on which he is sailing overseas, runs aground in mid-ocean on a coral-reaf. A parrot indicates a way of rescue. One of them must be prepared to die, swim to a mountain and there startle up the Bhäranda birds. 18 Bhima undertakes this, and saves the ship, but remains alone on the mountain. The helpful parrot gives him a means of escape. He is to cast himself into theocean, allow himself to be swallowed by a fish and thrown ashore. This takes place, and he lands in Ceylon. After manifold adventures he acquires a kingdom, but renounces it after some time, in order to withdraw as a hermit on Raivata, one of the peaks of the sacred Śatruñjaya. Book XIV contains the legend of the Jina Pāśvanātha and at the end a long prophecy of Mahavira,
17. Leumann, loc. cit., p. 607. The story also occurs in the second
narrative of Hemavijaya's Kathā-Ratnākara (German translation by Joh. Hertel, I. p. 10). A similar SinhaleseBuddhist dialogue, in J.E. Seneviratne. The Life of Kalidas, Colombo 1901, p. 20 f.: in Vallabhadeva's Subhāsitävali 2402; Ksemendra's Lokaprakāśa (Weber, Ind. Stud. 18, 3668.): Böhtlingk, Indische Sprüche, 2. Auflago, Nr. 4588. Cf. the story "Ein Wort gibt das andere" in J.P. Hebel, Schatzkāstlein, Stuttgart, 1888, p. 168 1., and Th. Zachariae,
Kleine Schriften, Bonn, Leipzig 1920, p. 195 ff. 18. According to Mahābhārata VI, 7, 13, there live in the
northern Kuru-land the Bhārunda birds, which have sharp teeth and are very strong, and throw the corpses of men who live to the age of thousands of years, into mountain caves. According to XII, 169, 10, they have human faces. The Pañcatantra (s. Benfey, Das Pantschatantra I. 111 f., 538; II, 360 f.. 525) tells of Bhāranda birds with two beaks.
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