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THE STORIES
Nīses-gun'-āhāram nara-nāham niya-paim pi mottuna genhai pangum Sukumaliya vva mayan'-aurā nārī
31
The only modification in detail is that Jitaśatru is made king elsewhere because he has been found asleep under an aśoka
tree.
The same narrative appears presented with great literary skill in the Dasa-kumāra-carita where the famous story of Dhūminī is put into the mouth of Mitragupta. Dhunyaka saves his wife by giving her his own flesh and blood at a time when famine is driving the population to cannibalism. He also saves the life of a man who has been mutilated. Dhumini conceives a passion for this man and forces him to satisfy her desires. Later she pushes her husband into a well but he is rescued by merchants and finds his wife again at Avanti. She accuses him of having mutilated her lover but he demands the testimony of the cripple who avows the truth.
In the Buddhist version of the tale (Cullapaduma-jātaka No. 193) the Bodhisattva born as the son of King Brahmadatta, is turned adrift together with his six brothers by their suspicious father. Starving in a desert they decide to eat their wives, but the Bodhisattva by a strategem saves his own wife and later nourishes her with his own flesh and blood. Reaching the Ganges they find a mutilated robber who is tended by the compassionate Bodhisattva. The wife falls in love with this man and pushes her husband over a precipice but he is saved by a lizard and in the end inherits his rightful kingdom of Benares. By chance the woman arrives there carrying her lover in a basket. The Bodhisattva on recognising her orders her to be killed but then relents and banishes her after ordering the basket to be firmly fixed on her head.
In the Katha-sarit-sagara (LXV) is included the story of a young merchant who, wandering in the desert, saves the life of his wife by giving of his own flesh and blood. Then later they save the life of a mutilated man who is in danger of drowning in a stream. The wife falls in love with him and, sending her husband to gather from a crag a rare herb, she cuts the rope that holds him. However he falls into a river, is saved and by the hand of chance becomes king in a distant city. As in the other versions of the story the wife arrives there carrying her crippled
| SR No. | 007017 |
| Book Title | Two Prakrit Versions of Manipati Charitra |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | R Williams |
| Publisher | Royal Asiatic Society |
| Publication Year | 1959 |
| Total Pages | 384 |
| Language | English, Prakrit |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 9 MB |