Indian Antiquary Vol 13

SR No.: 032505
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: John Faithfull Fleet, Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 492
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 22 MB

Page 47

FEBRUARY, 1884.]
relieved you of all subject of jealousy and dispute.""
Our leading mythographer, Sr. Adolpho Coelho, knows a Portuguese popular story, of which, however, he cannot obtain a complete version, in which there are three brothers, one of whom has an eye with which he sees at great distances, another has a carpet which carries one far away, the other has an apple or a water which cures every disease. Professor Adolpho Coelho sees in this story, to which, he says, there are many European parallels, a Buddhist origin; and traces it to the story which we have given from the Avadanas.
BUDDHIST LEGENDS.
The parallel story in India is No. 24 of vol. II of the collection Tuti Náme, edited by Georg Rosen, Leipzig, 1858, quoted by De Gubernatis, Mythologie Zoologique, vol. I, p. 135.1
In the collection of Hindu fables, in Sanskrit, the Panchatantra, the reader may find an interesting variant of the episode, in the story of "The Weaver who passed himself off as Vishnu." Benfey in his valuable study on these Hindu stories and apologues comments on some peculiarities of this story.""
The horse, which we thus see substituted by the mantle, the carpet, the boots, the shoe, is in the Buddhist religion one of the necessary requisites of the Chakravartin.63
A Chakravartin is he who possesses all that exists in the limits of the world. Buddha is a Chakravartin. His horse is white as the light of day, and has hair like the golden rays of the sun; he lives by drinking in the winds, and flies, traversing the whole of space.**
According to the Rgya-Tch'er-Rol-Pa, the horse belonging to the Buddha Chakravartin is grey, has a black head, its hair plaited, is covered with a net of gold, and traverses all the heavens. The Chakravartin mounts it at break of day, and traverses, from one side to another, as far as the oceanic confines, the entire world, not before the keeper, who has the courser in his charge, first ceases to ask it to neigh.
From the Vedic hymns we see that the sun
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61 Cf. Liebrecht, Volkskunde, p. 118. Pantschatantra, vol. I, p. 159-63.
3 Benfey, 1. c.; Spence Hardy, Manual of Budhism,
p. 127; Foucaux, Rgya-Tch'er-Rol-Pa, chap. III.
Cf. Sénart, Essai sur la Légende du Buddha, passim. es See Note II below, pp. 47 f.
Rigveda, I, 50, I; cf. with Rigv. IV, 45, 6, &c. 671, 58, 2; 140, 3; III, 1, 4; 2,7; VI, 2, 8; 12, 6; &c. as III, 27, 14. Os I, 14, 12. 10 Cf. VIII, 91, 12, with IV, 2, 8.
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is designated as a god who sees and knows all, to whom nothing is hidden, and who rises, drawn by his rays, by his horses," and this conception reveals a great development of anthropomorphism, because to the sun is given in the hymn VII, 77, 3, the double qualification of "eye of the gods," and "shining white horse." On the other hand, the sun is compared to the fire of the altar, and the fire of the altar is compared to the sun, because in mythology, as in all the Vedic cult, to celestial phenomena correspond like terrestrial phenomena, what takes place on earth has equally a place in heaven. The fire, agni, in Latin ignis, is also compared to a horse." It is he who goes from earth to heaven bearing the sacrifice to the gods, neighing from the first moment, i.e. crackling on the altar of sacrifice, roaring, flashing in the midst of the cloud-like lightning which pierces space.
It is he who draws the gods to the altar," it is.he who gives the victory, it is he who leaps from abysses, he is the victor who saves the hero. It is he who feeds on the winds, who is the friend of the wind;" he is the horse of which we can say with Ariosto :-"2 "Questo è il destrier.
Che di fiamma e di vento era concetto; E senza fieno e biada, si nutria Dell'aria pura.
Secure when attached to the hair of the magic horse, the companions of Simhabâhu can save themselves from the voracious Rakshasis, but under the condition imposed on Orpheus, of not looking back. They suffer themselves, however, to be enticed by the sirens of Ceylon, and die by their hands, as Orpheus by the hands of the Bacchantes of Thracia; they are lost through the motive which robbed Orpheus, the morning star rising over the earth, of the beautiful Eurydice, the aurora, his beloved."
In the Semitic mythology the same myth is met with. Goldziher" explains by the solar theory the myth of the daughters and wife of Lot. Like so many other traces of ancient
" Cf. Rigv. V, 19, 5; X, 91, 7; I, 94, 10; &c.
12 Orlando Furioso, Canto XV, 41. Cf. Custodio Jesam Barata, Recreaçam Proveytosa, Part I, Colloquio IV. And also Dissertaçies of Padre Antonio Pereira de Figueiredo, Dis. IV, Das Egoas da Lusitania, p. 100-6 of Book IX of the Hist. e Memorias da Acad. Real das Sciencias de Lisboa.
13 See Decharme, Mythologie de la Grèce antique, p. 571 ff.
"Op. cit., 189-97.