Manimekhala, a Divinity of the Sea
By Sylvain Levi
The Indian Historical Quarterly
Vol.VI, No.4, 1930.12, pp. 597-614
p. 597
A large number of the stories of the Pali Jataka
has drawn materials from the adventures in the sea.
The sea and its navigation evidently occupied a large
place in Indian life in the period when these stories
were conceived. The study of these texts throws much
light on the glorious period, almost completely
ignored in other branches of literature, of the
Indian civilisation during which the mariners, the
missionaries and the merchants of India carried the
culture of their fatherland to the islands of the
Archipelago, to the Malay peninsula and Indo-China. I
shall confine myself here to the study of an obscure
divinity of the sea, Manimekhala, "Girdle of Gems,"
who appears in two stories of the Pali Jataka and, it
seems, only in them.
The first, which bears the number 442 in Jataka
collection and is classified as the fourth in the
section of the stories of 10 stanzas, is the Jataka
of the brahman Samkha. Buddha narrates this story in
connection with a lay follower who had generously
treated the community and had at last given footwear
to the Teacher and his disciples.
Samkha Jataka (442)
In the days of yore, Benares was called Molini.
When Brahmadatta was the king of Molini there was a
brahman call-
p. 598
ed Samkha who was rich and had founded alms-houses at
the four gates of the city, in its centre, and at the
gate of his own house, in six places in all, and in
all those places he was used to make great charities
to the poor every day and give away hundreds of
thousands. One day he said to himself: "When I have
exhausted all the money that I have at my house, I
will no more be able to give anything; therefore,
before it is exhausted, let me go in a boat to the
Land of Gold and bring wealth." He had accordingly a
ship constructed for him, filled it with merchandise
and told his wife and children. "Till my return
continue to give without any interruption.'' Then
escorted by his slaves and following, he took his
umbrella, put his shoes on and towards noon, left for
the port.
A Pratyekabuddha who was on the (mount)
Gandhamadana after recollecting his thoughts, saw
this man who was going to search for fortune. "There
is," he said to himself, "a great man who is going to
search for wealth. Will he have difficulties on the
sea or not? '' He thought within himself and
discovered that he would have difficulties. "If he
sees me," thought he, "he will give me his umbrella
and shoes, it is for the gift of his shoes that he
will find a plank in the sea to save himself after
his ship-wreck. I would therefore be kind to him." He
came through the air, descended at a little distance
and treading on the burning sand which looked like a
bed of charcoal under the power of the wind and the
sun, he approached the brahman. The latter saw him
and his heart rejoiced: "It is a field of merit that
is coming towards me, I will sow there a seed
to-day!" He hurried towards (the saint), bowed unto
him and said: "Peace be unto you, grant me the favour
of leaving the way for a moment and coming under the
tree." Samkha proceeded towards the foot of the tree,
spread out his tunic and made the Pratyekabuddha sit.
He washed his feet with filtered and perfumed water,
rubbed them with perfumed oil, and then taking off
his own shoes, cleaned them, rubbed them with
perfumed oil and passed over to
p. 599
(the saint). "Peace be unto you, put this umbrella
over your head and go away if you like." He gave him
his umbrella and shoes. The saint accepted them for
pleasing him, and in order to increase his faith in
him, he flew away before his eyes to return to the
mount Gandhamadana. The bodhisattva, whose faith
increased at this sight, went to the port and started
on his voyage.
After navigating for seven days, his ship leaked
and could not be emptied of water. The multitude
trembling for the fear of death, invoked each his own
god and created a great noise. The great saint took a
servant with him, rubbed his whole body with oil, ate
as much sugar as was necessary with melted butter,
made his servant eat the same thing, then climbed
with him the mast, observed the horizon and remarked:
"It is on this side that our city lies"; then taking
precaution against the dangers caused by the fishes
and tortoises, he jumped with his companion at a
distance of several cubits. The multitude perished.
The great saint began to cross the ocean with his
servant. Seven days passed in this way and during all
this time, he washed his mouth with the salt water
and observed fast on the sabbath day. At this time
the gods, who protected the earth, had installed the
goddess Manimekhala to watch over the sea. "If there
is a ship-wreck and if men are in danger, men who
have taken the three Refuges, or who observe the vow
of holiness, or who piously worship their
parents-thou protect them." The goddess for the pride
of her sovereignty neglected her duty during seven
days. But on the seventh day, she examined the sea
and discovered the brahman Samkha who was pious and
virtuous. "Now for seven days he has fallen in the
sea," she said to herself, "if he had perished I
would have been much reproved." Quite confused, she
took a golden bowl, filled it with the heavenly
viands of exquisite taste, then through the air she
appeared before him in the sky and said: "It is now
seven days that you have not eaten anything, take
this heavenly food." He
p. 600
looked up and said: "Take your food away, I am
observing the fast." His servant who was following
him did not see the goddess, but heard him (his
master) speaking. "This brahman," said he to himself,
"is of a delicate nature; it is now seven days that
he has not eaten anything; he suffers; the fear of
death, I think, is making him rave; let me go to
console him." The servant then recited a stanza, the
first of the story:
"Thou knowest much, Oh Samkha. Thou knowest the
doctrine well and thou hast seen many samanas and
bahmanas. But for talking, thou choosest an improper
time. There is nobody here except me to give a
reply."
Samkha heard him and thought: "He does not know,
I believe, that there is a goddess here." He said to
him: "My friend, I have no fear of death, but I am
talking to some one else." He then recited a stanza,
the second:
"A beautiful maid with charming eyes, wearing
bracelets of shell is offering me food in a golden
bowl, and says "take and eat it," But as for myself,
I have a pious soul and I declined her, saying, "No,
thank you."
The servant thereupon addressed him in a stanza,
the third:
"On seeing a supernatural being appearing before
himself, a man of good sense would tell him "Arise".
Ask her, therefore, with hands folded out, "Are you a
woman or really a goddess?"
"You are right," said the bodhisattva and recited
a stanza, the fourth:
"Since you have been pleased to think of me and
since you are requesting me to take food, may I ask
you, madam, are you a woman or really a goddess?"
The goddess then recited two stanzas:
"Samkha, I am a goddess of high rank. If I have
come up to this place in the midst of the ocean, I
have
p. 601
done it out of pity and not out of ill-will. I have
come to give you protection."
"Do you want to eat and drink? Do you want either
to sit or lie down? Do you want, Oh Samkha, carriages
? Whatever it may be, Oh Samkha, you have only to ask
for. You will get it as soon as you wish it."
The great sage on hearing it said to himself.
"Here is a goddess who has come over the surface of
the ocean to tell me that she wants to give me this
or that. Is it due to my previous meritorious acts or
is it through her power that she wants to make those
gifts? I am going to ask her." Reflecting thus he
questioned her in a stanza, the seventh:
"And my libations and all my offerings, if they
yield any fruit, is it you who command it. Oh maiden
of beautiful hips, fine form and eyebrows! what have
I done, tell me, for acquiring it?''
The goddess then said to herself: "If this
brahman asks me about the good act he has done, it is
because he thinks that I do not know about it. Well,
I will tell him about it," and then she uttered a
stanza, the eighth:
"On the burning road a mendicant was walking. His
feet were burning, his throat was dry and he was
panting. Then you took off your own shoes for him.
Such is the good act of which you are acquiring
fruit."
The great sage having heard this was full of joy.
"What! on this great ocean, where there is nothing on
which to rest, the gift of my sandals can bring me
whatever I desire! Oh! I did well in becoming
charitable to a Pratyekabuddha!" He then uttered a
stanza, the ninth:
"Oh! that I may have a boat with strong planks
through which water cannot pass and which the wind
carries! All other vehicles are out of place here.
Take me at this very hour to Molini."
The goddess was pleased to hear this. She made a
ship of seven precious stones. It was eight times
hundred and
p. 602
forty cubits in length and four times hundred and
four cubits in breadth and twenty poles in depth (140
cubits). It had three masts of ruby, the riggings
were of gold, the sails were of silver, and the bent
oars were also of gold. The goddess filled the boat
with seven Kinds of precious stones, kissed the
brahman, placed him on the fully equipped boat but
did not take any notice of his servant. The brahman
gave him the (marvellous) bowl which he had won on
account of his good actions, the man became enjoyed
at this. Thereupon the goddess kissed him also and
placed him on board the ship. She herself piloted the
ship to the city of Molini, put all the wealth in the
house of the brahman, and then came back to her own
place...
The goddess of that time is to-day the nun
Uppalavanna, the man is Ananda, and the brahman
Samkha is I myself."
The second story, no.539, more developed than the
former, is one of the last of the collection. It is
included in the "large section," and has for its hero
one of the greatest names of the Indian tradition-the
king Janaka, here Maha-Janaka, of the country of
Videha, who has been glorified by the Upanisads, as
well as by the epics, as the accomplished type of
wisdom and whom Buddhism could not afford to neglect.
It is superfluous to say that Maha-Janaka is no other
than Buddha in a previous birth. The framework of the
story is as vague as possible: One day the assembled
monks were extolling the Master for having left the
palace for searching and preaching the law. The
Buddha intervenes and tells them: "It is not for the
first time that I have left a palace,'' and he began
to tell them the story of Maha-Janaka. Of this long
story, full of incidents, I will draw the attention
of the reader only to the episode in which
Manimekhala, the goddess of the sea, appears.
Mahajanaka Jataka (No. 539)
Mahajanaka, the posthumous son of king
Aritthajanaka who had been killed by his brother, is
brought up in exile at
p. 603
Campa, in the house of a brahman who had given
hospitality to his mother. His mother puts at his
disposal the jewels which she had saved (VI, p.34.).
"Well, mother," said he, "give me this wealth, I
will take half of it and go to the Land of Gold, I
will bring from there much wealth and will recover my
throne". He took half of this fortune, procured the
articles of trade and embarked on his boat in the
company of other merchants who were going to the Land
of Gold. Before leaving, he bowed unto his mother and
said: "Mother, I am going to the Land of Gold." The
mother said: "My child, a voyage does not always
succeed, there are many obstacles, better not go. You
have abundant wealth for recovering the throne." "No,
I will go there, Mother", and he saluted his mother,
went out and got on board the ship. This very day,
Polajanaka, the first younger brother and the
murderer of Aritthajanaka, was attacked by illness
and took to bed. Seven hundred merchants had embarked
on the boat, in seven days the ship had done seven
hundred leagues, but on account of her high speed she
could not hold out, the planks cracked, water poured
in everywhere and the vessel foundered in the deep
ocean. The men wept and cried and invoked all kinds
of divinities. But the great sage did neither weep
nor cry, nor did he invoke any divinity; when he saw
that the boat was foundering, he mixed sugar with
clarified butter, filled his stomach with it, soaked
in oil two of his robes which were very smooth,
dressed himself tight, and held himself close to the
mast. When the boat foundered, the mast floated, the
men were eaten up by fishes and tortoises, and the
water around was full of blood, The great sage
clinging to the top of the mast observed: "It is
towards this direction that Mithila lies." He then
jumped from the top of the mast over the fishes and
the tortoises and fell into the sea at a distance of
one hundred and forty cubits. This very day
Polajanaka died, and from this very moment he began
to cross the ocean by force of his arms like a golden
trunk of tree rolling on the waves which
p. 604
had the colour of gems. He swam for a full day and
further on till the seventh day when he observed that
it was a full moon day. Then he washed his mouth with
saline water and observed the fast. Thereupon the
four gods, the protectors of the earth, said: "If
there are beings that honour their mother even who
are in danger of perishing in the ocean, a danger
which they did not merit, you ought to save them."
This is what they said to Manimekhala, the daughter
of a god, appointed to watch the ocean. But during
seven days she did not throw her glance at the sea as
the fortune she was enjoying had distracted her
thoughts. It is also said that the daughter of a god
had gone to an assembly of the gods. "It is now seven
days", she said to herself, "that I have not thought
of the sea. Let me see what passes there." She then
perceived Mahajanaka. "If Mahajanaka had perished I
would not have been any longer admitted into the
assembly of the gods." At this thought she went near
the great sage, standing in the sky with the
ornaments on her body and addressing the great sage
she pronounced the first stanza:
"Who is there that toils in the high sea without
even sighting the shores? Thou shouldst know why thou
makest such an effort."
The great sage told her: "Now it is seven days
that I have been traversing the ocean and I have not
seen any living being except myself. Who is there
that speaks to me?"
He looked up into the sky and pronounced the
second stanza: "I know what the world is and what the
price of effort is. This is why I am striving in the
ocean even without sighting the shores."
The goddess interested to hear him talking on
religion told him in a verse: "In the endless abyss,
thou seest not the shores. Thy effort is useless and
thou runnest towards death." But the great sage said:
"Who tells you that? If after making all my
efforts I must die, I will be blameless."
p. 605
He who acts bravely does not repent. He is
discharged with regard to all, gods, parents, and
ancestors.
As much as I can, I will exert myself. I will act
bravely striving towards the shores."
On hearing this the goddess praised him in a
stanza:
"On the vast ocean and without the shores in
sight, thou makest a long effort without losing thy
courage. Thou shalt reach the place which your heart
longs for."
And she asked him still, "Oh, Sage of great
energy, where shall I lead you?"--"To the city of
Mithila" was the reply. Thereupon she took him in her
arms raising him up like a bunch of garlands and
pressing him in her bosom like a cherished child she
shot forth through the sky. He had had his whole body
burnt while remaining in sea water for seven days,
and so he fell deeply asleep through the touch of the
goddess. Thus she carried him to Mithila.
The then goddess of the sea is to-day
Uppalavanna, etc."
The two Jatakas have this feature in common that
their connection with the life of Buddha is clearly
artificial;they have no bearing on any known positive
episode of the biography; the circumstances, which
are supposed to lead to the story, have been invented
for the necessity of the story itself. They have also
a large number of other features in common. The two
heroes Samkha and Janaka embark in search of fortune
to the Land of Gold, Suvarnabhumi, the Chryse
Chersonesos of the Greek geographers, this half
fabulous land of the Far East which attracted all the
adventurers. The place-names, collected by Ptolemy
with great difficulty, show in what degree the search
of gold haunted the pioneers of Indian civilisation.
Let us not ask the narrator of our story for precise
information about the voyage. The seven hundred
leagues done in seven days by seven hundred merchants
who embarked have no more positive significance than
that of the mast of ruby, the riggings of gold and
the sails of silver belonging to the boat which
brought back Samkha.
p. 606
The precautions taken in both the cases just before
the ship-wreck have a more real character. The teller
of the story has not invented anything here but
repeats the exact information. A man filled with
sugar and butter and with his skin rubbed with oil or
better, dressed with a robe soaked in oil which
sticks to the body, can resist the slow freezing of
the different parts of the body while plunged in the
water of the sea. The competitors in swimming even
to-day do not act otherwise. The narrator of the
story further says that the sharks and the tortoises
flock round the sinking boat and redden the water
with the blood of the victims. He reproduces the same
indications on the goddess Manimekhala in both the
texts. If she is asked to watch the sea at the time
of ship-wrecks, it is by virtue of a temporary
delegation;she was not accustomed to fill such a high
post and in her joy she fails to acquit herself.
Instead of saving the ship-wrecked hero at once, she
lets him float at the mercy of the waves for seven
days, confused as she is by the pride of her divine
promotion. The story however contains another
explanation of her negligence: "It is said (vadanti,
ed. of Fausboll, or some say, keci vadanti, ed. of
Siam) that she was gone to an assembly of the gods.''
As a good author who edificates, the narrator of the
story has preferred the reading which bears a moral
lesson: "Too sudden a turn of fortune confuses even
the head of the gods." But we can perceive that
Manimekhala had interested story- tellers (keci)
other than those of the two Jataka accounts.
Is it forbidden to us to know more about her? If
Manimekhala has not been as yet met with elsewhere in
the Sanskrit, Pali or Prakrt literatures, there is
another region in India itself where her name has
remained famous. Manimekhala is the title of a greet
classical poem of the Tamil literature. Tamil, as we
know, is a language of the Dravidian family spoken by
16 million people in South India from Madras to Cape
Comorin, but its cultural horizon extends far beyond
its geographical limits. It possesses a varied and
p. 607
original literature which is the richest and the most
ancient of the Dravidian literatures with
master-pieces of most of the literary types. The poem
called Manimekhala (Manimegalei or Manimekhalai in
its Tamil form) is one of its classics; it is, so to
say, inseparable from another classical poem, the
Silappadigaram. "The story of a ring of the knee'',
which forms the prologue of the former. These two
works have been analysed in detail and translated
into French by Prof. Julien Vinson in two small
volumes published in 1900 under the title of Legendes
Bouddhistes et Djainas, traduites du tamoul, in the
Collection des Conteurs et Poetes de tous pays.
Recently again the Manimekhala has been brought to
the notice of the Indianists because of a controversy
bearing on the literary history; the case is too
important to be passed in silence.
The master of Indian logic, Dinnaga, the great
doctor of the Buddhist Church, has written amongst
others a work called the Nyayapravesa which had been
preserved only in the Chinese and the Tibetan
translations. The Sanskrit original which remained
unknown for centuries was discovered a few years ago.
A discussion opened on this text is still going on.
Is the Nyayapravesa a work of Dinnaga? The last but
one canto, the XXIXth of the Manimekhala, contains an
exposition of syllogisms and sophisms which is found
in the Nyayapravesa with the same examples. This has
become a weapon in the arsenal of controversy.
Moreover, if we believe that the poet had copied from
the logician, then he becomes posterior to the
latter. In that case, he lived later than the 6th
century A.D. But the Tamil nationalism, as the Tamil
country is nowadays passing through a natioual crisis
like all other civilised countries, claims for the
poem a more ancient date and for its author a
complete originality. Professor Krishnaswami Aiyengar
of the University of Madras undertook the study of
the Manimekhala from this point of view and published
in 1928 a series of articles under the title: "The
Mammekhalai in its historical setting". He
p. 608
had the happy idea of joining with his impassioned
arguments a complete translation of the Manimekhala.
The work is of Buddhist inspiration and it aims
at instructing and edificating. Manimekhala is the
name of the heroine, but it is also the name of a
deity who is her guardian angel. The young girl is
the issue of a tragic love affair between a merchant
and a dancing girl. She is the ideal of chastity,
charity and faith. She lives at Puhar also called
Kaveripattanam, the port of Kaveri, situated at the
mouth of this river, which was one of the great
markets between India and the Far East since the time
of Ptolemy at the end of the second century A.D., and
which remained such even in the time of Cosmas (6th
century A.D.) and was destroyed in the 15th century
by the silting up of the river. The city, of which
the splendours have been so often described in the
Tamil literature, is now no more than a village of
fishermen but is still counted as a place of
pilgrimage. The beauty of the young girl kindles love
in the heart of prince Udaya who pursues her and
intends to take her away during the joyful tumult of
the festival of Indra. Her tutelary deity Manimekhala
descends from the heavens to protect her. She carries
her away over the seas to a sacred island called
Manipallavam. There is found a marvellous seat
(pitha) on which Buddha had been seating. It awakens
in men the memories of their past existences. In
front of this seat there is a tank where every year
on the day of the anniversary of Buddha's birth, on
the full moon day of the month of Vaisakha, appears a
miraculous bowl which never gets exhausted. This bowl
has a complicated history. In the days of yore the
goddess of knowledge, Sarasvati, had given it to one
of her favourites, Aputra, "the son of cow," who used
it for feeding the people of the extreme south of
India. Then having learnt from the merchants from the
other side of the sea that there was a famine in the
island of Java (Savakam) caused by drought, Aprtra
embarked with his bowl for that country. The boat
suddenly met a tempest
p. 609
and was compelled to stop at the island of
Manipallavam for a day. Aputra got down on land, but
could not rejoin the boat in time. He remained alone
in the deserted island and threw the bowl, which was
of no use then, into a tank, wishing that it might
come back to the earth once in a year, that on that
very day, if a charitable person happens to pass by
those shores, the bowl might pass spontaneously into
his hands. The young Manimekhala, led there by her
guardian angel at a propitious time, thus got the
bowl and brought it back to Puhar where her
protectress led her back through the sky. With the
bowl in her hands she passes by the roads of the town
and feeds the poor, the widows, and the orphans.
Meanwhile, the prince who had pursued her assiduously
is killed by a supernatural being, and public rumour
makes the young girl responsible for this murder. She
is compelled to flee away through the air to Java
where Aputra by transmigration has been miraculously
born of a cow, adopted by the king, and has succeeded
to him on the throne. A minister of the king who had
been to Puhar for signing a treaty of alliance
between Java and the Cholas and had known her
adventures, recognises her and takes her to the king.
She induces Aputra to embark as a pilgrim for the
island of Manipallavam, and goes there flying in
advance, receives him, and leads him to the
marvellous seat. The goddess of the island then comes
to the maid to inform her about the catastrophy that
had destroyed Puhar after her departure. The goddess
ManimekhalB had submerged the capital of the Chola
king to punish him for neglecting the celebration of
the annual festivity of Indra. ''If you are pained'',
she added, "to hear that Manimekhala, the guardian of
the sea, has cursed the city of Puhar in this way,
you should know it by way of consolation that this
same goddess had years ago saved from the sea one of
your ancestors who was going to be drowned and who
subsequently became the most charitable man of his
time."
Manimekhala then goes to Vanji (now called Karur,
to
p. 610
the west of Trichinopoly), then to Kanci
(Conjeeveram, to the south-east of Madras) one of the
seats of Buddhist culture. The famine was ravaging
the place. She visits the great temple raised in the
centre of the city where there was a Bodhi tree of
gold with leaves of emerald and she asks the king to
construct at Kanci a replica of the sacred seat of
Manipallavam, and a temple of Manimekhala and
celebrate the periodical festivities. Then she goes
to attend to the lessons of a famous saint called
Aravana Adigal who explains to her the fundamental
principles of Buddhism and delivers to her a complete
course of logic for refuting the heretics. Aravana
also confirmed the story of the events which she had
.heard at Manipallavam: "The king of Puhar had
neglected the festivity of Indra. Indra, in his turn,
ordered the goddess Manimekhala to sink the town of
Puhar into the sea. An ancestor of your father, many
generations ago, was caught in a ship-wreck; he was
lost in the sea like a golden needle on a fine carpet
of gold;for seven days he desperately fought for
saving his life. His attention being drawn by the
quivering of the white cushion, Indra ordered the
goddess to save the future Buddha who was endangered
in the sea. She picked him up from the sea so that
the perfections might be accomplished and the wheel
of the law put in motion. Your father heard from the
Caranas who were always very well informed that such
was the usual function of the goddess Manimekhala and
gave you her name."
This story, which has been twice repeated in the
poem as if for pointing out its importance, is in
perfect agreement with the Jataka story. Most of the
features reappear, in the Jataka of the brahman
Samkha as well as in that of the great Janaka. There
may be some hesitation in choosing between the two,
but a striking detail dissipates the uncertainty. The
poet of the Manimekhala has introduced in his story
an unexpected ornament: the ship-wrecked who was
floating is compared to 'a golden needle on a rich
carpet of gold. This is at least the interpretation
of Prof.
p. 611
Krishnaswami Aiyengar, but my colleague Prof. Jules
Bloch, whom I requested to verify the original, tells
me that the text should be translated as 'as a golden
needle (usi-Sk. suci) sews (tunniyad) a green mantle
(kambala).' The imagery is thus much more
appropriate. This kind of ornament is infinitely rare
in the poem; to emphasise the interest of the story,
the author counts, above all, on the charm of the
rhyme which plays in subtle assonances on the second
syllable of every verse and on the initial of each
hemistich. He counts on the agreement of the assonant
lines, each of which is arranged into a complete
sentence of variable length. He counts still on the
happy choice of words often borrowed from the most
secret treasure of the language and for the rest he
counts on the ardour of his faith and the value of
his doctrines which he preaches. Such a curious
comparison introduced by the saint Ayvana in the
recalling of an ancient, miracle thus appears in an
unexpected relief.
The Jataka of the great Janaka offers an exact
parallel to this case. The author who has always used
a flat prose for his story while describing the
ship-wrecked hero floating on the sea makes use of a
comparison which does not fit in with the colourless
weft, of his style: "He began to cross the ocean as a
golden trunk of tree rolls on the waves which have
the colour of gems." Such is at least the meaning of
the text edited by Fausboll without any variant. But
the Siamese edition of the Jataka, published from
Bangkok in 1922, which gives a carefully established
text, reads here (instead of suvannakkhando viya)
suvannakaddali (sic) khando viya, "like the trunk of
a plantain tree in gold," a detail, which completely
modifies the spirit of comparison. The plantain tree,
in the whole Sanskrit literature, is a symbol of
illusion; it has the appearance of a tree but is
simply constituted by a bunch of leaves. Buddha on
different occasions (Majjh. I, 233; Sam. IV, 167)
uses the parable of the man who went with his axe in
search of good wood (Sara-) and cut only the trunk of
a plantain tree. The trunk of
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the plantain tree reappears again in the enumeration
of illust ions along with wave, bubble of water,
mirage etc., in the Samyutta, II, 141 and in the
Sanskrit Mahavyutpatti, 2826 (edition of Sakaki). The
trunk of the plantain tree is also the mark of
physical beauty; the dictionary of "the Pali Text
Society" quotes the authority of the commentary of
the Vimanavatthu, p.280. In fact, the commentator in
this passage explains the expression sampanna-uru
-thana of the text by kadalikkhanda-sadisa-uru (a
Woman who has her thighs similar to trunks of banana
tree). The same expression occurs in a witty stanza
introduced by the commentator Ravicandra in his
edition of Amaru, but not known to other
commentators:
urudvayam mrgadrsah kadalasya kandau
madhyam ca vedir atulam stanayugmam asyah/
lavanyavariparipuritasatakumbha-
kumbham manojanrpater abhisecanaya//
"Oh, the beauty with the eyes of a deer, her two
thighs are like the trunks of a plantain tree, her
middle is like the altar, her breasts are
incompsrable. Her two golden cups are filled with a
liquor of salacity. (Every thing is ready) for the
consecration of the king of love."
Chezy, the first Professor of Sanskrit in the
College de France, in his Anthologie Erotique which
he published under the pseudonym of Apudy, translated
it or rather paraphrased it in this way (no.42):
"with thighs firm and polished as the trunk of the
plantain tree." The author could not be further
misunderstood than this. The trunk of the plantain
tree is neither strong nor polished. The poet wanted
to suggest in the place of the ungraceful image of
the two ritualistic posts the impression of delicate
fragility which is attached to the plantain tree.
Therefore if we accept the reading of the Siamese
edition, the ship-wrecked hero rocked by the waves,
when he is compared with the trunk of a plantain
tree, is shown to us as a poor little thing, weak and
small, lost on the vast surface
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of the ocean. And it was 110 doubt thus that the
Tamil poet understood the text of the Jataka while he
substituted the already used image by the comparison
with the needle on a piece of cloth.
Let us go back to Manimekhala(1); it is
henceforth established that, whether heroine or
goddess, she is precisely associated with a locality.
Her original residence was at Puhar, in the port,
where the great river of the South, the Kaveri,
empties itself and which was one of the great centres
of trafftic between India and the islands of the
Archipelago. She had her temple, her cult and her
festivities at Kanchi (not far from Madras), the holy
city of Buddhism in the south of India. She is one of
the nume rous deities, "the guardians of the sea,"
but her proper domain is that region of the ocean
which extends from Cape Comorin to the marvellous El
Dorado of the Far East. Beyond this zone of the earth
and water she is unknown. The Jatakas in which she
appears and plays the role which agrees so closely
with her local functions could not have been imagined
except in Puhar or Kanchi. They were surely narrated
to the pious pilgrims in some temple or convent. We
know, from the Chinese pilgrims specially, how other
Jatakas were connected with well-determined sites or
sanctuaries. In the very cycle of the Jatakas of the
sea, I would content myself in referring to the
Suparaka-Jataka, preserved in the Sanskrit as well as
the Pali collections. The old and blind pilot who, by
force of his piety, saves his boat from the submarine
whirlpool hidden at the extremity of the earth is the
eponymous hero of the great port situated in ancient
times near Bombay which saw the flowing of the Greek
trade towards
______________________
1. While this paper was going to the press the chance
of a research in another line has led me to
learn that the goddess of the sea, Manimekhala,
is still known under this same name in the Cambo-
dian theatre, I have written to Cambodia for more
information. When I get them, I hope to publish
them in this same Quarterly.
p. 614
the beginning of the Christian era. We are too much
used to consider India as a massive block. But the
slow progress of our knowledge permits us to separate
the elements little by little and to discover under
the appearance of factitious unity, the infinite
variety of elements which have formed the magnificent
whole of Indian civilisation. The Jataka, the epic of
stories, has been able to mould in a harmonious
contrast, the legends, the short local stories
collected from the four corners of India; it is for a
merit of the same kind that the noble epics, the
Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and in Greece the Homeric
poems, have been recognised as the symbols of the
civilisation which produced them.