________________
THE STORIES in love with Müladeva though travestied as a dwarf because of his proficiency in dance and song.
In the MPC the story of Sukumālikā is used as an illustration of ingratitude but it is more usually treated as a warning to avoid attachment to a woman.
6. The noble steer
This parable consists in effect of two stories. Into the tale of the bull which vindicates itself by a voluntary ordeal is inserted, by a rather flimsy link, that of Jinadāsa and his unchaste wife.
The inserted story is found in a closely parallel version in Haribhadra's SK.1 The wife Bandhulā of a pious Jain, Jinadharma, is in love with his friend Dhanadatta. One night Jinadharma goes to a śünya-gyha to practise meditation. His wife too comes there with her lover and brings along her bed. One of the spiked supports of the bed pierces Jinadharma's foot but he endures the pain of it until he dies from loss of blood. Reborn in the world of the gods he at once returns to convert the wife and friend of his earthly existence. He first alarms them till they contemplate suicide and then consoles them, teaching them the Jaina solution of samlekhanā.
The story of the bull occurs in the BKK (Vrşabha-kathānaka No. 102(4) ) as one of the parables narrated by Manipati to stress the need for circumspection in judgment. A brahmin, Somaśarman has two wives one of whom gives birth to a son. Her jealous co-wife kills this infant and impales it on the horns of a bull, the bhadra-vrşabha. The people of the town turn in horror from the bull as a killer but it clears itself from the imputation by taking a red-hot iron bar in its mouth and is free again to roam at will.
8. The ministers
This again belongs to the corpus of Āvaśyaka legends. The details given in the Av.? and in Haribhadra's commentary on the Avaśyaka-sūtra II, 57
goņi (1) candana-kahā (2) ceļão (3) sāvae (4) bahira (5) gohe (6)
Țankaņao vavahāro (7) paờivakkho āyariya-sise 1 Jacobi's ed., p. 760 ff.
? Leumann: Die Avasyaka-Erzählungen, pp. 37-38 and Avasyaka-sūtra Agamodaya Samiti, ed. Part I, p. 98.
