I9I3] ADVENTURES OF MULADEVA 629 



utilitarian and moral aspects of life (artha, kautilya, niti, dharma). 

 But the Buddhist and Jinist texts are religious forthright ; they teach 

 the high piety, the high moral law, the dhamma. Yet they work up 

 the same variegated, unmoral, often immoral fiction, and that, too, 

 always under the cloak of teaching the law (dhammakatha, dhamma- 

 kaha). The texts are full of curious discrepancies between the tissue 

 of the story which is often palpably phlogistic, so to say, if not pru- 

 rient, and the sententious piety which hangs from it as loose em- 

 broidery. It comes as a shock when we read in Andabhijta-Jataka, 

 how a king who is the future Buddha hires a professional rascal 

 (dhutta) to corrupt an innocent young girl by pander's tricks worthy 

 of the doctrines of the Kuttanimata or Samayamatrka, in order that 

 he may beat his own chaplain (purohita) at gambling. The text has 

 in mind to bring out in strongest relief the mental superiority of the 

 Buddha, but at what cost? It is hard to shut out the impression that 

 those good saints, those Bhikkhus and Arhats ; those Sahus and 

 Kevalins liked a romantic, or even salacious story for its own sake ; 

 that they sat there in their viharas and agramas with something very 

 like the ghost of a smirk on their faces listening to what people will 

 always listen to, but saving their faces in the end by drawing the 

 moral which tacks itself gratuitously to the heels of almost any 

 naughty entertainment. 



The story of Miiladeva, as told by Devendra, is a tonr-de-force 

 of this sort, which is hard to beat and not quite easy to understand. 

 Muladeva is still the gambler who gambles away the clothes ofif his 

 back; the black-art practitioner; the musician; the companion of low 

 women ; the viveiir; and the resourceful adventurer. None of these 

 qualities, we must note, respond to the Jinistic ideal. But the story 

 recoins many of these values ; it makes him out a veritable pattern 

 and exemplar : skilled in every accomplishment, versed in many 

 arts, noble of mind, of grateful disposition, a heroic protector, virtu- 

 ous, clever, and gifted with beauty, grace, and youth. Or, in the 

 words of Devadatta, the hetaera, whose devotion to him is the saving 

 motif of the story: "he is wise, of noble soul, a very ocean of kind- 

 liness, skilled in the arts, pleasant of speech, grateful, virtuous, and 

 of discerning mind." One is surprised at hearing the jargon of the 



