Sambodhi 2004 Vol 27

Author(s): J B Shah, N M Kansara
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 45

Vol. XXVII, 2004
(E) UTOPTIA AND (E)UCHRONIA IN....
39
One of the features of the Uttarakurus --- that they are born as twins ---- is also found in the Mahābharata.? Hemacandra's love for hyperbole makes the people appear as enormously tall. The representation in fact is too exaggerated to be credible.
One motif of the Uttarakuru legend, however, is worked out to the full. That is the motif of spontaneous productivity. The Uttarakurus, as described by Hemacandra, do not have to work either for their food or for their habitation or even for their costumes, ornaments and entertainment. The Atānātiya Sutta waxes eloquent on this theme :
No seed they scalter, nor in furrows led Are ploughshares : of itself the ripened corn Stands without toil of tilth for men to enjoy. This rice purged of red powder and of of husk, Sweet scented, boiling on hot oven-stones : Thus they (untoiling find and) eat their food.'
This kind of 'spontaneous fertility' is a well-know aspect of the Noble Savage motif and a significant feature of chronological (soft) primitivism.10 we shall have occasion to come back to this point again.
Does Hemacandra draw on any exclusive Jain sources or on the pan-Indian tradition ralating to the happy state of mankind ? It is not possible to identify any single source, for the Uttarakuru legend itself was composed of several mutually exclusive but loosely related motifs. Hemacandra's reference to the twin-offspring requiring nourishment only for forty-nine days, is taken from a Jain source (found nowhere else),11 so are the references to the wishfulfilling trees. All in all, the account is anything but puritanical. Hemcandra mentions wine, food, choice musical instruments, ornaments, etc. The only Jain touch one finds is that the Uttarakurus "have slight passions." But then the Buddist account too suggests so (Same parallels to the Mahābhārata account have also been pointed out earlier.
The prortrayal of a happy state of man, free from all toil and turnmoil, is also encountered in Classical European mythology and literature. A few examples may be cited to show the parallels concerning the motif of spontaneous fertility. Hesiod (800 BC ? -- 700 BC ?) speaks of the Golden age thus :
And when they (sc. the golden race of mortal men) died, it was as though