10 BLOOMFIELD— ON THE ART OF 



In the Prabandhacintamani king Nanda of Patalipura dies, 

 and a certain Brahman enters his body. A second Brahman by 

 connivance comes to the renovated king's door, recites the Veda, 

 and obtains as reward a crore of gold-pieces. The prime minister-^ 

 considered that formerly Nanda was parsimonious, whereas he now 

 displayed generosity. So he arrested that Brahman, and made 

 search everywhere for a foreigner that knew the art of entering 

 another body. Hearing, moreover, that a corpse was being guarded 

 somewhere by a certain person he reduced the corpse to ashes, by 

 ■placing it on the funeral pyre, and so contrived to carry on Nanda 

 as monarch in his mighty kingdom as before. Benfey, Das 

 Paiicatantra, I. 123, quotes Turnour, Mahavanso, Introduction, p. 

 XLII, to the efifect that Buddhist sources report of Candragupta, 

 the founder of the Maurya dynasty, the same story. Candragupta's 

 body was occupied after his death by a Yaksa, named Devagarbha. 



In the Vampire-story in Civadasa's recension of the Vetala- 

 paiicaviiigati, 23 ; Kathasaritsfigara, 97 ; Oesterley's " Baital PachisI," 

 22 ; " V^edala Cadai," 22,-^ the Vampire relates how an old and 

 decrepit Pagupata ascetic abandons his own shriveled body and 

 enters that of a young Brahman who has just died, and later on 

 throws his own body into a ravine. In the Hindi version of the 

 Vampire stories ("Baital Pachlsi," 24), but not in the classical ver- 

 sions, there occurs an unimportant variant of the same story. 



In Kathas. 45. 47, 113, the Asura Maya tells Candraprabha that 

 he was, in a former birth, a Danava, Sunitha by name, and that 

 his body, after death in a battle between the Devas and the Asuras, 

 had been preserved by embalming. The Asura Maya proposes to 

 teach Candraprabha a charm by which he may return to his own 

 former body, and so become superior in spirit and strength. 



In the Hindustani " Bhaktimfd "-^ there is a merry story about 

 Camkaracarya, who has entered into a learned disputation with a 

 Doctor named Mandan Misr. The latter's wife had crowned the 



21 (^akatala (or Cakadala) is his name in the same text, p. 306, and in 

 another Jain text, Parigistaparvan 8. 50. 



22 Babington in " Miscellaneous Translations from Oriental Languages," 

 Vol. I. Part IV, p. 84. 



23 See Gargin de Tassj^ " Histoire de la Literature Llindoui et Hindou- 

 stani," IL 44. 



