Secondary Tales of the Two Great Epics

Author(s): Rajendra I Nanavati
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 69

Secondary Tales of the two Great Epics
curse and thereby destroying his tapas. But as a result, he is made fruitless. Now the gods should do something to restore his fruitfulness. The gods, headed by Ayni, then, approach the Pitrdevas who give Agni the testicles of a ram. Agni grafts these upon Indra. Since then, Indra is Meşa-vrsana. 134
About the curse destroying the tapas of a sage, we shall have more to say later on. But, looking closely, the motif of Indra's attempt to break the penance of a sage by means of seduction can, once again, be seen here. We have seen above in the analysis of the Brāhmaṇical Arthavādas that the only detail which is constant is that Indra is the paramour of Ahalyā. All the other details are shifting and therefore historically unreliable. The tale, therefore, cannot be accepted as describing some historical incident.135 Even if we grant that Ahalyā, Kausika and Gotama might be historical persons in the Brāhmaṇas, their contemporaneity cannot be ascertained, since Gautama is introduced in the litany at a later date and Ahalyā is not proved to be an actual historical person yet even in the Brāhmaṇas. And in the epic-form of the tale, the workings of an attempt to graft some mythical concept upon the account are clear, Dr. G.H. Bhat remarks : "Attempts have been made to explain the account allegorically - Ahalyā meaning 'down' or 'night' ... or "land'; and jära meaning the destroyer' or 'adorable'. The meaning of the expression (i, e. ahalyāyai jāra) will then be -- (1) Destroyer of dawn or night i. e. the Sun or Fire and (2) one who praises or develops land or agriculture. The first meaning is preferable.”'136 In view of what we have seen above, we must differ from the learned editor and point out that the second meaning seems to be more probable. But even here a little contradiction still remains. If Indra, the god of rain, unites with Ahalyā the land, how could he be 'fruitless'? Should not the name A-halyā be reinterpreted more specifically to mean the land which is ‘un-ploughable' (from 'hala' - meaning a 'plough')? If the land is unploughable, Gotama - the bull - will naturally be away since he is useless. Even Indra will be fruitless, the only fertility possible being that of 'ajāvika' - goats and rams. The unploughable being that land where, not agricultural but only animal fertility is possible could more probably be a hilly land. The life being hard there, the land is sparsely inhabited, thus the curse of sage Gotama upon Ahalyā to keep secluded is more in keeping, but, we should confess, to insist on this last point would be going rather far without enough supporting evidence.
After the testicles of a ram are grafted Indra becomes ‘meșa-vịşaņa.' In the text of the Subrahmanya litany fully quoted above, the punctuations of the text are as given in Taittiriya Aranyaka. It will be seen that they do not correspond to the breaks adopted
134 BK. 48. 1-10. Cf. indras tu meşa-vrşaņas tadăprabhrti rāghava/ 135 F. E. Pargiter (CF. Ancient Indian Historict Tradition, pp. 116, 222) and S N. Pradhan
(vide Chronology of Ancient India, pp. 11, 12, 16, 37) accept the incident as well as the characters to be historical and proceed to establish various contemporaneities and chrono.
logies on their strength. 136 BK. p. 453.