________________
Tantra and Shirazad
115
shes that the Indian original belongs to an earlier period than that, before the time of Pūrņabhadra and other rewriters of the pañcatantra
Now in all the texts which contain the Prologue the heroine is named with only slight variations due to the varying languages of the transcribers Tantai (or Tanteyya). Tanrai, Taoturu and Tantri. From this it appears certain that the original Sanskrit name is Tantra, found only in the title of the Tantropākhyāna whose Prologue is missing. Consequently we must translate the title as “The Episode of Tantra', Evidently the name is fictitious and derived from tantra, 'system' in politics), on acco. unt of the heroine's skill in that art or science.
Let us now examine the Prologue in the Lao version, or at least in Dr. Raksamani's English translation of it. King Manda Cakkavatti in Uddhodaoa saw a wedding procession and conceived the desire to have a wedding and a new bride for himself every day. He gave orders accordingly to his Chief Minister to supply a beautiful new girl every day. Haviog in due Course despatched every girl he could find, the Minister became distraught at having none available for the next day. His daughter Nang Tanteyya (or Tantai, whom he had naturally kept bidden) seeing him in such a state extracted the reason and offered to go herself, sayiog simply that she would tell the King stories so that there would be no more trouble. The Mioister being forced to agree, Tantai took her maid with her and when the King seemed to be asleep, resting after their union, Tantai proposed to the maid telling stories to pass the time The prakaranas follow as the stories told, but this abridged text hardly. explains the development of the situation in the frame story. The Dame Manda might be a corruption of Nanda, who was certainly a cakravartin emperor, but this alone would be slender evidence for the identification.
The mere seeing of a wedding procession seems an insufficient motive for Manda's drastic order to his Minister. One would expect that he should be dissatisfied with his previous queen or queens, indeed that she or they had been banished for some serious fault. It is here that the Fish Laugh story, of which we noted a version appended to the Tamil text, would come in as just the right kind of introduction. Having discovered the depravity and hypocrisy of his queen or queens, the emperor resolved to eliminate any further possibility of being deceived and made ridiculous by taking a fresh queen every day.
Jain Education International
For Personal & Private Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
