Treasury of Jain Tales

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

Page 52

XXXIX
humanity has crowded up in this panorama of life and the Indian story literature has tried to capture for us the kaleidoscopic and elusive beauty that we call human nature. Two other women, besides Rohini stand out prominently in this display of the complex pattern of human contradiction. One of them is the poor young woman whom a king marries. She becomes an object of satire of the other queens in the palace in spite of the dignity with which she conducts herself. But she is never lost to what she considers the basic reality of her life everyday she spends some time in the privacy of her room and puts on once again the same old rags in which the king had picked her up, stands in front of her mirror and reminds herself of the transitoriness of the surrounding pomp and glory and of the reality of the poverty in which she was born. The other remarkable lady is the famous Princess Malli who has the distinction of becoming ... the only female Tirthankara. She too has a firm hold on reality which teaches her that the golden sheen of the outside of the body very much depends on the unhampered, unrepressed and unhibited functioning of the internals. Her suitors were misguided as much as most of us. Actually she is a fully integrated personality for which, as Carl Jung would approvingly suggest, gold is the right symbol. No wonder Malli leaves behind her statue of gold, with no element of corrupt materials.”
Wherever necessary a descriptive note is given at the beginning of a story. This note tries to bring out the bearing that the story has on life as we experience it. Originally the context of the story was of course different. A reference to the Note on the sources will easily show it. It is a characteristic of good literature that it operates on various levels and conveys much wider meaning than was initially intended.