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DHURTAKHYANA IN THE NISITHA-CURNI
DR. A. N. UPADHYE, M.A., D. LITT.
When I wrote my essay "The Dhûrtäkhyäna: a Critical Study", I knew from a reference that the Nisitha-curni of Jinadasa-gani Mahattara contained some information about the rogue Eläsädha. Prof. J. C. Jain, Bombay, later on informed me that he had read something like the Dhūrtakhyāna in that Cürņi to the text of which unluckily I had no access. It is lately that my friends Dr. B. J. Sandesara and Dr. U. P. Shah, Baroda, kindly made available to me the necessary extracts from the N.-curņi, cyclostyled-type-script-ed. by Acarya Sri Vijayapremasūri (Bombay V. S. 1995), vol. I, pp. 92-95. The following observations are based on these extracts, which are given at the close of this essay in an Appendix.
To begin with there are the following three gathas of the Nisithabhāṣya (nos. 294-6) which give the requisite clue words of the illustrative tale:
ससएलासादमूलदेवखंडा यजुण्णउज्जाणे ।
andardtant and arvená sù an eggfer || RV || चोरभया गावीओ पोट्टलए बंधिऊण आणेमि । तिलअइस्कुहाडे वणगय मलगा य तेलोदा ॥ २९५ ॥ वणगयपाटणकुंडिय छम्मासा हत्थिलग्गणं पुच्छे |
रायरयग मो बादे जहिं पेच्छ ते इमे वस्था ॥ २९६ ॥
After these gåthäs, the Cürni gives in Präkrit prose with a couple of metrical quotations in Sanskrit a fully developed story of the Dhûrtas. At the end we have a sentence like this:
से
त्तक्खागगाणुसारेण णेयमिति ॥ गतो लोइयो मुसायातो ।
Looking at the clue words in the gathās, one can say that the Cürni has given all that is obviously hinted in them; but the concluding colophon says that something is remaining and that it should be known from, or completed according to, the Dhuttakkhanaga.
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The story given in the N.-curņi may be analysed thus: Many Dhûrtas assembled in the Old Park to the north of Ujjaini in the territory of Avanti. Three of them, males: Sasaka, Eläşadha, Müladeva, and the fourth, a female, Khaṇḍapānā: every one of them had five hundred rogues 1. This is included in the edition of the Dhurtākhyāna by Jinavijaya Muni, Singhji Jain Series No. 19, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay. 1944.
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