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 THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.

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horse (though certainly transformed into an ele phant) in Buddhaghosa's Comm. on the Dham mapada.” Just as so many Alºsopic fables have found a place in the Jātaka-collection, which forms a part of the sacred Tipitaka,t so also from various other sources, western tales, Sagas and other forms of popular thought have found

[JUNE 7, 1872.

their way into India by means of that direct intercourse with the Greeks to which we have

already referred.: The Saga of the kidnapping of Ganymedes appears indeed to have found admis sion into an Upanishad belonging to the Rig veda. § And perhaps we can point to certain ele ments of the same kind even in the Ramayana

(Od. X, 347);

philosopher Herodes, in similar circumstances, that his

while his companions slept around him outside. While he was thus with her on the couch, he heard singing and music, and in reply to his questions, she told him what was the state of affairs, and gave him such directions as would enable him

child would be restored to life “if he would only name to him three men, who had never mourned for any one (as

and Vijay a spent the night with her there

to make himself master of the island ; and by means of her

dead)" ( tº ºvoy airw rººs rivas 3,954 rows bro, artis, anotva ºrors wers, 6xxºras.) Similarly also the emperor Julian, in his 37th epistle (ed. Heyler, Mainz, 1828, p. 64,

counsel and with her help, he succeeded in this. After a time, however, he put her away again, when the presented itself of winning “a queen consort of equal ran to himself” in the daughter of the P and a v a-king of M ad hur à and the Yak k h in i met her death by

66, 341), in which he seeks to console his friend Ame rios (var. l. Himerios) on the death of his young wife,

the hand of one of her Yakkha relations, enraged at her

nions, three names of persons who had not yet been called

on account of her treachery.—With regard to this story, I remark that the word suruńga (1957% according to Benfey) used in v. 14, is of itself sufficient to demonstrate, what indeed requires no further proof, the existence of Greek influences in the time at which the Mahéranso was composed : Cf. Ind. Streifen II, 395. Though this coinci dence cannot indeed be directly made use of for determin: ing the relations that exist between the above legend and that which is found in the Odyssey, seeing that the word

to mourn (7:13, &revººrwy bºaxra ; nomina trium quas memo lurisset, Heyler translates; but according to the con

º

avery:, “underground passage” is not used either in the corresponding portion of the latter work, or elsewhere at all in the poem, still it is certainly a significant circumstance that in a story which has so many points of resemblance with one in the Odyssey, we should find a word which can be easily recognised as Greek, though altered in form through the influence of oral tradition. The difficul ties which prevented Turnour (Introd. p. xliv) from recog nising in the story told in the Maháranso an echo of the Homeric Saga certainly do not exist for us. Parables, p. 39. In the same way, too, may be easily ex
 * Wide Fausböll, p. 158; and in Rogers, Buddhaghosa's

plained those correspondences with the Odyssey, which Schott has pointed out as existing in the later Mongo lian version of the Saga of Geser Khan (Abh. d. K. 4.

d. W. zu Berlin, for the year 1851, p. 279, or p. 17 of the separate impression): see also Jilg in the 'er handlungen der Würzburger Philologen Versammlung (1868), g 58-71. (A Tibetic recension of the same has recently, (see

Schiefner in the Melanoes Asiatiques of the Petersb. Acad. V. 47, 1863) come into the possession of E. Schlagintweit :

but so far as I am aware nothing more nearly relating to this subject has yet been published.) The Indian account, corresponding to the story of the Trojan horse, of the arti ficial elephant inside of which a number of warriors were secreted for the purpose of effecting the capture of king Udayana, appears to have formed also the subject of a drama, devoted to the fortunes of this king : vide Sahitya

darpana Ś 422 : yatha Udayanacharite kilińajhastiprayogah. + Cf. Ind. Stud. III. 356. In Buddhaghosa, too (Faus böll, Dhamm. p. 419) an AEsopic fable is found ; that of the flight of the tortoise through the air (cf. Ind. Stud. III.339).

On this subject, compare, for instance, what I have said in the Zeitschr, der Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellsch. XIV. 269, in the Monatsberichte der Akademie for the year 1869, p. 39 ft., and in the Ind. Streifen I, 126. II, 368. Perhaps we should class also with these materials the parable quoted

by M. Müller in his paper on Buddhist Nihilism, p. 19, from Buddhaghosa's Comm. on the Dhammapada, of the mother mourning the death of her only son, whom Buddha com forted by bidding her bring him as a medicine that would procure the boy's restoration to life, a grain of mustard-seed “from a house in which neither a son, nor a father, nor a

slave had died.” The fruitless search brought home to her the passing nature of all earthly things, and raised her above her individual sorrow. This parable, which M. M. calls a test of true Buddhism,” appears in Lucian's Demo nar, Cap. 25, (Paris : 1840 ed. Dindorf, p. 381), identi

cal in substance, but sofar changed in form, that Demonax,

whom Lucian speaks of

as his contemporary, promised the

tells the same story, in this form, that Democritus of Abdera promised Darius to restore life to his dead spouse, if he should succeed in finding, throughout his wide domi

text, this is is decidedly incorrect). writer

The imperial letter

alludes also to the “herb that banishes sorrow"

(: 3;2.2×o, wrºss) in the Odyssey IV, 220-225, which, mixed in the wine of any one, makes him for an entire day forget his mourning for mother, father, brother, and son; and he speaks of his story as being to his friend “probably not strange, though to the most of people, as he believes, unknown” (3,850s ºra goºo; a Boy, siriº, ºro, +x^*, qo, e.tv

irws of #4, ov, Tols ratiot, os. &s tºxos 47, watoy). Buddhaghosa wrote about 420 A. D., consequently about 60 years after

the emperor Julian (d. 363), and some 250 years after Lucian. If therefore any connection is to be looked for here, which

can hardly indeed be called in question, the probability ºf the borrowing having taken place from the West is certainly greater than, or is, at all events, as great asthat of the con verse supposition ; and this opinion is not materially affect ed by the circumstance that, according to Mor. Haupt's kind communication regarding both of these passages, the “De monax" is really a pseudo-Lucianic work; for the emperor's letter is certainly genuine, and at the same time it appeals to the fact that although the story in question was “to most people unknown,” yet it was “probably not new" to the person addressed—an evident proof that it had come down from an earlier time, though to be sure the assertion of the connection of the story with Darius or with Demperitus (in whose biography in Diogenes Laertius, according to Heyler p. 342, nothing of the kind is to be found) has no claim to be received as true. And besides, as M. M.'s account is not taken direct from the Pāli text, but from the Burmese translation of the same, translated into English by

Capt. Rogers (vide p. 100, 101 of his book), it is quite natural to expect that an investigation of the original might show that it stands in a still closer relation to the Greek

form of the story (the corresponding section is unfortunately not given in Fausböll's extracts from Buddhaghosa's Com mentary: vide ibid p. 289; a legend of similar import, however, is found at p. 359, 360). In fact we have already seen that Buddhaghosa shows an acquaintance with Greek elements from other sources also. At all events, just as the legends regarding Christ that were current in the ninth or tenth centuries of the Christian era have little weight with refer ence to the time at which Christ lived, if they are not sup orted by evidence from other sources, so these legends of

uddhaghosa's, which occupy, almost throughout, the stand

point of the most credulous superstition, and give evidence ºf the full development of Buddhist doctrine, have as little claim eo inso to be regarded as “parables of Mahinda, if nor of Buddha himself” (an opinion toward which M. Müllet evidently leans, in his preface to Capt. Rogers' boºk, p. xvii), so long as this conclusion is not supported by other evidence out of the Tipitaka itself ; though indeed they often enough refer at least to the sutta, jātaka, atthaka

tha, &c. That they contain much legendary matter that is really ancient, and of the highest value, I do not mean for a

moment to deny : and in regard to their antiquity, Fausbøll himself has pointed out that they seem to be borrowed in part from an ancient metrical version (l.c. p. 99). § Wide Ind. Stud. IX, 41.