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A comparative study of the Jivandhara Story.. creates an interval during which Civakan may acquire the military power that is necessary for his conquest over Kattiyankāran.1 3. The story about the previous birth of Civakan
The story of the previous birth of Civakap is related in the Up. for the first time by the celestial who is guarding a lake. In the Up. this story is narrated along with the story of the previous births of Nandādhya and his wife Sricandrā. Tēvar does not deal with the stories about the previous births of Nandāļhya and Sricandrā, and only deals with the story of the previous birth of Civakan. This is only revealed in the last chapter, the Muttiyilampakam, by the cāraṇan Manivaņpan to Civakan. After giving up all worldly pleasures, Civakan goes to the temple of the Arhat with his wiyes. In the temple Caranan Manivannan preaches Jaina doctrine to Civakan and his wives. Along with the religious preachings the cāraṇan also relates the story of the previous birth of Civakan.
The foregoing comparative study makes it clear that, a priori, it is not easy to say between the Up. and the Cc. which preceded which. As shown above the two texts deal with the Jivandhara story roughly on parallel lines. While the story in the Up. is skeletal, the Cc. develops the theme in a more elaborate way. This coupled with the fact that the Up. is in Sanskrit would make it appear that it was the source from which Tēvar has borrowed his theme. But all the differences that are found do not seem to be explainable on the grounds of Tēvar's efforts to impart an epic character to the story. Many of them may well have been the differences arising from a different version of the story. This is also suggested by the fact that the later authors do not take one or the other version of the two but combine both in different ways. The differences in the characters and their names also suggest this possibility. As we have shown earlier, the same character has been named differently in the two texts, the Up. and the Cc. However it is quite certain that Tēvar had one or more Sanskrit and Prakrit sources which strongly influenced the composition of the Cc. It is not easy to decide whether or not the Up. was one among them without knowing the exact period or date in which the Cc. was composed.
Apart from the similarities we find between the stories of the Up. and the Cc., we also see similarity in some incidents and episodes which are found in the other Sanskrit texts and the Cc. For example, the svayamvara of Illakkanai, in which the father of Ilakkaņai proclaims that his daughter will be given to the man who can hit the machine in the form of a rotating pig, strongly resembles the svayamvara of Draupadi in the Mahābhārata.
One can also see similarities between the episodes which are found in the other Sanskrit works and the Cc. Thus the following incident has a striking similarity to a situation in the Ratnāvali of Sriharsa. 1 Ibid, v. 393. 2 Ibid, vv. 2849-2890.
3 Supra, pp. 70, 71,
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