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The Tales in Mahabharata
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Just as, Vidura says, Duryodhana should be abandoned, Pandavas should be enfolded under wings. Vidura almost summarily relates the tale of a person who, out of greed, killed some gold-laying (lit. gold-spitting) wild birds staying in his house, in order to get all the gold inmediately, and thereby destroyed both present and future gains.320 Similar is the attempt of the Kauravas to snatch away everything from the Päņdavas immediately. The story of the gold-laying birds is famous. The motif is well-known. There is a story in šānP in which Sșñjaya "from the grace of Nárada obtained a son whose excreta were gold; Suvarṇashthivin was slain by some robbers but afterwards revived by Nārada".321 "There is an ass with the same gift in Sicilianische Märchen No. 52" 322 There is in Pañcatantra a story of a bird which has a golden excreta. The bird, however, is caught by a hunter, is presented to the king and let loose carelessly by the minister.323 But the tale as referred to by Vidura itself is very famous even as an Aesopic fable.
When Draupadi also is finally won over in the famous game of dice, Duryodhana asks Vidura to bring Draupadi in the assembly-hall to receive commands from her new masters. Vidura warns him that he is digging his own grave like that goat which, having dug up with his feet the earth in which was buried a bent-up sword and which, thus being sprung up, cut the throat of the goat itself.334 Kavathekar325 compares the tale to its various versions in Aitareya Brāhmaṇa3 26 and in Jātakakathā,327 and concludes that the tale must be a very popular one. This is also confirmed from that fact that Patañjali refers to a maxim called ajakspāṇīya-nyāya.328 Usages like "digging one's grave" found in almost all the languages, also point to the popular currency of the central motif of the tale,
There is a rather detailed reference to a bird called Bhūlinga, 329 which is said to live on the far side of the Himālayas, which is said always to speak "mā sāhasam"
320 SabP. 55.12-13. 321 Index to the Names in the Mahabharata, S. Sörensen, Delhi, 1963. p.667. SānP.31. 322 The Ocean of Story, Ed Penzer, Vol.I, p.11 fn.l. 323 Pancatantram, Nirnayasāgar Press, Bombay, Tenth Edn., 1959. Story III. 14. pp.257-8. 324 SabP. 59.8. As F. Edgerton has shown ("The Goat and the Knife" Journal of the American
Oriental Society, Vol.LIX, pp.366-8) the critical reading solves a number of difficulties of interpretation created by corrupt reading. The critical version is as follows:
ajo hi sastram akhanat kila'ikaḥ sasire vipanne padbhir apāsya bhumim! nikțntanam svasya kapthasya ghoram
tadvad vairam mã khanih panduputrajḥ 325 Sańskyla Sahitya Men Nitikathā kā Udgama Evam Vikāsa (Hindi), P. N. Kavathekar,
Chowkhamba, Varanasi, 1909. pp.357 ff. 326 II.vi.3. 327 No.481, Takkäriya jātaka. 328 Cf. Laukika-nyayanjalih, Ed. G. A. Jacob, Bombay, 1907. p.1, Referred to in Kavathekar,
p. 141. 329 SabP. 38.17 and 41.18-22,
S. T, 20
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