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English translation by George Baumann
Digambara-s, at whom it was actually aimed. A variant of their Paṭṭāvalī, which along with Bhadrabahu, his pupil, Visakha, also repeats assigns to the duplicate (identified with Arhadbalin) Visakha's four pupils who are quite similar to the four monks [27] in the anecdote. Besides, the Sthulabhadra anecdote also has a narrative historical importance. It occurs, together with both of the preceding sections 28 & 32, again in another form at the opening of Guṇādhya's Bṛhatkathā whose version of that anecdote "Upakośā and her four lovers" has experienced many translations and variations in Asia and in Europe. It is worthwhile to note that all these pleasantries have an historical background that has been understood and depicted by Gunāḍhya under a quite different approach (taking sides with Vararuci, instead of Sthulabhadra).
The fictitious Bhadrabāhu's time
When did the fictitious Bhadrabahu actually live? Not the second Bhadrabāhu, construed by the Digambara-s when they adapted their Sūri-list, who really never lived (even though Fleet and others wanted to fill him with life),3 nor even a third one, also construed, whom the Digambara-s, now and then, allow to succeed (and whom Hoernle correctly terms a "fiction"), but rather the composer of the Niryukti collection. In the preceding section it has been shown that a source of this author (from which the sloka-s Utt.-niry. 94 f. come) knew about the Bhadrabahu anecdote dealt with above. Thus, it is probably necessary to presume a certain interval between this and the Niryukti composer, even if the Bhadrabahu anecdote itself as a tendentious invention originates from the time of the historical Bhadrabahu. This conclusion becomes even more compelling and the interval even bigger, if the other stories with the same context might have come into existence only a considerable time after the historical Bhadrabāhu. There are three such stories; they are those that serve as examples for the discomforts 6, 20, and 22. In the third one a popular body of stories has been woven into the history of the third schism (Ind. Stud. XVII 109-112). Such events are assumed, which, according to tradition, must have happened around the year 214 after Mahāvīra's death (cp. 1. c. p. 93).5 The second story is formed by the third episode of the legend about Kalaka who seems to have lived not too long before or just after the beginning of the Christian era. Finally, the first of these three stories we meet with is an episode from
1.
"The first (Maghanandin) spent the rainy season at the foot of a Nandi-tree, the second (Jinasena) under a grass (cover), the third in a lion's cave, the fourth in the house of the courtesan Devadattā." The four church embranchments (Nandi-sangha, Sena-sangha, Simha-sangha, Deva-sangha) that the Digambara-s consider to be orthodox are supposed to have originated from these four men. Ind. Ant. 1892, p. 71-73 (not so correct 1891, p. 350).
Of course, the picture of the four fictive pupils of Bhadrabahu that appears in the Bhadrabahu anecdote plays a role here and, on the other hand, the tradition of the four possibly historical pupils of Bhadrabahu that we came across on p. 2633. Most likely, these tetrads are the reason that Bhadrabahu's life (Bhadrab. II 76-83) also counts four main representatives within Bhadrabahu's laymen (Kuberamitra, Jinadāsa, Mādhavadatta, Bandhudatta).
2 cp. Tawney's translation of Kathāsaritsāgara, vol. I p. 20† & 571, II p. 627.
3 cp. Epigr. Ind. IV 26, etc.
4 Ind. Ant. 1892, p. 60.
5
Sergius von Oldenburg gives a synopsis of the story along with the text from Utt.-niry. 130, 132-134, 136, 138, 140 in the Journal R.A.S. 1893 p. 346-350. Utt.-niry. 131 should also be included; this is the first śloka of the Jātaka (overlooked by S. v. Oldenburg). The Uttarâdhyayana-story, the Samyaktvakaumudi and Jātaka 432 contain fairly complete depictions of evolved popular poetry, whereas in Pancatantra I 4 only a mixture of the old couching reverberates with that replacing the Uttarâdhyayana-version. 6 The Kalaka-legend consists of four episodes, which in older narrative literature are found only in
isolation:
A. The Saka-invasion.
Version 1. Kalpabh. IV 714 (= Niś.bh. X 254) kath.
66
2. Av.-niry. VIII 182,3 kath.
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