________________
112. ABSURD TALES
In the city of Ujjayini, in an old park, there usually assembled a group of mischievous persons who passed their time in idle gossiping. Usually Sasa, Elāsādha, Múladeva and a woman Khandapānā by name were invariably present there. Each one had a large group of followers. Once it so happened that they were all caught up in a long spell of heavy rain. For over a week they could hardly stir out. They were terribly short of food and hunger so much oppressed them that Müladeva came out with a suggestion : let every one narrate a story, it might be from his own personal experience or the one that he had heard from others and the others should defend the absurdity of the story by citing parallel situations from the Mahābhārata. Rämăyana and other sacred scriptures. But the one who cannot do any such thing would go out in the rain and procure food for every one there. But they must remember that the story they would tell would necessarily contain some element of absurdity or incredibility.
Elāsádha came out with the first story :
I was taking my cows to a jungle. I saw some robbers coming. I quickly spread my blanket on the ground and packed all the cows in it and came back straight to the village with that bundle, and the cowherds who had gone with me to the jungles with their herds started looking for the cows. That quite amused me but quickly enough the robbers attacked the village. The villagers were greatly scared and they all along with their animals entered a cucumber to hide themselves. A goat came along and swallowed the whole of the cucumber. The goat in its turn was sucked in by a python and the python was picked up by a crane. The crane perched on a
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
