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A comparative study of the livandhara story..
to the following verse which is given in the fifth tantra of Pancatantra. 1
a parikşya na kartavyam kartavyam supari kșitam, pascad bhavati samtāpo brahmanyam nakulärthataḥ 1/2
(Do not do (anything) without examining. Do what is well examined. (Otherwise) there will be pain as happened to brahminee because of a mongoose.)
The Manimēkalai, the epic written after the Cilappatikāram, also contains a few references to Sanskrit popular tales For example :
koţik kocampikkömakan äkiyu vațit tért tānai vattavan-tannai vañcam ceytuli van talai vițiiya uñcai yir tonriya yūki antaņun uruvukku ovvā uru nõy kantu parivuru makkaļil tam pariv eyti
([There gathered around her a crowd, much like the crowd that had collected around Yaugandharāyaṇa when he assumed the disgusting disguise of a man suffering from disease, and entered the streets of Ujjain for the purpose of releasing Udayana, his master, from the prison into which Pradyota, the king, had thrown him.)+
Here the poet Cattanār in describing the crowd which gathered around Manimēkalai who became a Buddhist nun after receiving instructions from the sage Aravana Atikal, alludes to the similar incident which took place in the story of Udayana. Here the point of the comparison will be missed without a knowledge of the Udayana story referred to. Pradyota, the king of Ujjain, captured Udayana by deceit. His minister Yaugandharāyaṇa came to free him, disguised as a person suffering from a deadly disease. The people of Ujjain felt sorry for him when they saw him. Their sorrow is compared to that felt by the people of Pukār when they saw Maņimēkalai in the garb of a Buddhist nun.
The Udayana story from which the above incident is taken was a popular theme in Sanskrit literature. In the later period it is also often alluded to in Tamil literature. This story of Udayana is the first Sanskrit story to have been taken as the source of a Tamil epic. It is used as the main theme of the literary work, the Perunkatai. Before the period of the Perunkatai, only allusions were made to Sanskrit stories in Tamil works, while the plots were always of Tamil origin. Konkuvēlir, the author of the Perunkatai, was the forerunner of Tēvar in dealing with a Sanskrit story in Tamil. 1 Ațiyārkkunallar, commentary on Ațaikkalahkātai, Cilappatikaram, Jines 54-75. 2 Visušarman, Pascatantra, Nirnaya Sāgara edition, Bombay, 1902, Vth Tantra, verse 18. 3 Manim ēkalai, 15, lines 61-66. 4 Translated by S. Krishnaswami Aiyanagar, Manimekalai in its historical setting. London,
1928, p. 149.
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