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J. C. Jain
(2) A vidyadhara called Maya approaches Rāvana with a proposal of marriage to his daughter Mandodarī. The experts in reading marks predict that the first product of her womb will cause the destruction of the family. But thinking that her first child could be abandoned, she was married anyway. In the course of time, Mandodari gave birth to a girl who was enclosed in a casket and concealed by the magic art tirakkharaņi,20 and then placed under the ground of king Janaka's garden. But while the ground was being ploughed the casket was caught in the ploughshare and was handed over to the king, who entrusted the live child to his queen Dhārini and had it brought up like a daughter.
There are various versions regarding the birth of Sitā: a) since she is said to have sprung from a furrow (sita)11 made by Janaka while ploughing the ground, she is called ayonija, i.e, not womb-born, (b) According to the Mahabharata, Valmiki's Ramayana, and Vimalasūri's Paumacariya, she is the daughter of Janaka, born in a natural way. (c) In the Dasaratha Jataka, she is the daughter of king Dasaratba and the wife of her own brother Rāma. (d) In the Vasudevahindi, Guņabhadra's Uttarapurāņa (9th Century A.D.) and the Mahabhāgavata Devīpurāna (10th or Ilth Century A.D.), she is the daughter of Rāvana by his queen Mandodari. An echo of this tradition can be found in the Tibetan and Khotanese versions of the Rāmāyana dating from about the 8th or 9th Century A.D. as well as in the versions of Indonesia and Thailand. In the Tibetan version Sitā is enclosed in a copper vessel and floated on the water, where she is found and adopted by an Indian peasant who names her Rol-rñed-ma (i, e, Lilavatı ).12 In the Khotanese version a sage living on the bank of a river opens the box and rescues the girl out of compassion for her plight 18 Sita's leading to the annihilation of Ravana's family and her discovery in front of Jagaka's plough must be older than the composition of the Vasudevahindr. However, it seems that the Tibetan version of the Rāmāyana was influenced by the Brhatkatha of Guņāļhya.14
(3) The achievement of the two boons by Kekai : (1) King Dagaratha, pleased witb his queen Kekaj for her expertise in the art of serving in
10 Also tirikkharini (84) and tirikkhanani (164). Tiraskarinikā is used in the sense of a
curtain in the BKSS (XVII 81; also the Rāmāyana, il.15.20) and in the sense of a
rod (XVI1,157). 11 She is invoked as presiding over agriculture (Rgveda, IV, 57,6). Sit kura is counted
as one of the 18 taxes (Avasyaka Niryukti 1078); Byhatkalpa Bhāşu:7 (1,3647) has mentioned Strajanna (Strāyajna), a festival when cooked rice was distributed to the
monks 12 See Jan De Jong, "Three Notes on the Vasudevahindi, "Samjñāvyäkarana, Studia Indo
logica, Internationalia, 1954; Rev. Father C. Bulcke, Rāma-karhā, 1962, p. 261ff, 13 H. W. Bailey, BSO AS, Vol. X, p. 564. 14. C, Bulcke, Ibid. p. 262,
