Treasury of Jain Tales

Author(s): V M Kulkarni
Publisher: Shardaben Chimanbhai Educational Research Centre

Page 51

XXXVIII
is long time scale; on this the Indian story operates. The story of Sanatkumăra should illustrate the final reward of the enlarged perspective. His personality becomes well organized and he deserves the pleasures that come to him.
It need not be therefore concluded that the Indian story looks down on the ephemeral happenings and passing moments. There are at least four stories here that describe to us how a man suddenly develops the wisdom of the Buddha through a casual event like the sight of a faded garland or of an old bull that was once a very picture of virility and youth. It causes enlightenment. A passing moment transforms itself into a moment of discovery and a common man into a Near Buddha.
The Story of the Mākandi brothers' voyage should find a worthy place in the voyage literature of the world, by the side of Haklyut's Voyages and many other Spanish and Italian accounts. The Indian woman mentioned in this story, the terrible woman who charms sailors by her beauty and youth but destroys them by her demands has her counterpart in Homer's Circe. The story also works up a fabulous atmosphere which clearly sends ripples of Arabian Nights in our minds.
This collection of stories should prove how very inadequate it is to describe Prakrit writings as merely didactic and religious. It may mainly be so but not entirely. It presents quite a variety of situations that should remind readers of Boccaccio or Balzac. Read for instance the story called Water from the Roof. The story of Müladeva and the courtesan Devadattā is equally secular and sympathetically human. The story of Rohini that offers comments on the basic human types should not be read only as a defence of the Varna system in Indian sociology. The criminals that appear in some of the stories bring in a landscape that is rich in psychologically meaningful symbols such as underground dwellings, dilapidated temples, deep wells and beautiful but wicked women. Other stories describe retail traders that are not very scrupulous with simple minded villagers, cheats, unfaithful husbands and equally dishonest women...- the whole lot of