THE CHARACTER AND ADVENTURES OF MULADEVA. 



By MAURICE BLOOMFIELD, Ph.D., LL.D. 



(Read April i8, 1913.) 



Any selection of Hindu fiction might fitly open with the only 

 story that attempts a continuous account of Miiladeva's adventures, 

 because Miiladeva is one of the very few figures in Hindu fiction 

 that may be described as a " character." In general the personnel 

 of Hindu fiction is made up of stock or lay figures. Such are, above 

 all, the young prince, usually of inefifable beauty, virtue, strength 

 and skill, who contrives to get himself separated from his happy 

 home, and starts upon a career of adventure. This leads up to a 

 union with a no less hyperbolically beautiful and virtuous princess. 

 The hero, for his part, is liable to be carried off by a mettlesome horse 

 into the wilderness, where his adventures begin. He is pretty sure 

 to come upon the heroine in some unpleasant predicament, such as a 

 prospective uncongenial marriage, or, when she is in some personal 

 danger. E. g., times without end, the hero saves the beautiful 

 maiden from an infuriated elephant, usually by throwing his upper 

 garment before the elephant's trunk. ^ Or, quite in the manner of 

 St. George and the dragon, he saves the princess from a bloodthirsty 

 Raksasa.^ In the end he marries her, and she, incidentally, bestows 

 her father's kingdom upon him. 



Very frequently the prince is attended by a faithful friend, per- 

 chance the son of his father's chief minister. The two, as boys, had 

 played in the sand together, that is, had made mud-pies together.^ 

 This friend is prone to display much heroism and self-sacrifice in 

 behalf of the prince : he is a stock figure of the better sort. Simi- 



^ Kathasaritsagara 89; Story of Bambhadatta, in Jacobi's " Ausgewahlte 

 Erzahlungen," p. 16, 1. 19 ff. ; " Story of Agadadatta," ibid., p. 71, stanzas 53 ff. 



2 Kathasaritsagara 79; Vetalapaiicavingati 5. 



3 Such a person is called in Sanskrit, paiisukrldita (Parigistaparvan, 

 p. 123; cf. Harsa-Carita i, Bombay edition, 1897, P- 17 5 in Pali, pansukllita 

 (Jataka 83 and 519); Mahavastu 3. 451; in Prakrit, pansuklliya, Jacobi's 

 " Ausgewahlte Erzahlungen," p. 20, 1. 16. 



616 



