[308] This Introductory Story is also told as the introduction to Jātakas Nos. 141 and 184.
[309] A “Rogue elephant” is a well-known technical term for a male who has been driven out of the herd, and away from the females, by a stronger than himself; or for a male, who, in the rutting season, has lost his self-command. Such elephants, however gentle before, become exceedingly vicious and wanton.
[310] Literally Samaṇa-Brāhmans, the Samaṇas, or Self-conquering Ones, being those who have given up the world, and devoted themselves to lives of self-renunciation and of peace. Real superiority of caste—true Brāmanship—is the result, not of birth, but of self-culture and self-control. The Samaṇas are therefore the true Brāhmans, ‘Brāhmans by saintliness of life.’ The Samaṇas were not necessarily Buddhists, though they disregarded the rites and ceremonies inculcated by the Brāhmans. It would not have answered the king’s purpose to send Brāhmans: who are distinguished throughout the Jātakas, not by holiness of life, but by birth; and who would be represented as likely to talk, not of righteousness, but of ritual. I cannot render the compound, therefore, by ‘Samaṇas AND Brāhmans,’ and I very much doubt whether it ever has that meaning (but see Childers contra, under Samaṇa). It certainly never has the sense of ‘Samaṇas OR Brāhmans.’ It was an early Buddhist idea that the only true Samaṇas were those members of the Order who had entered the Noble Path, and the only true Brāhmans those who had reached to the goal of the Noble Path, that is, to Nirvāna. See Mahā Parinibbana Sutta, p. 58.
[311] Perhaps ‘Woman-face’ would be a more literal rendering of the word Mahilā-mukha. But as the allusion is evidently to the elephant’s naturally gentle character, I have rendered the expression by ‘Girly-face.’ The exaggeration in this story is somewhat too absurd for Western tastes.
[312] So at p. 121 of the Mahāvaŋsa the king sends Mahinda to find out why the state elephant refused his food. Mahinda finds the motive to be that the elephant wants a Dāgaba to be built; and the king, “who always gratified the desires of his subjects,” had the temple built at once! The author of the Mahāvaŋsa must often have heard the Jātaka stories told, and this among the number.
[313] Note by the Commentator. “This so-called enforcing (or illustrating) the story by a discourse on the Four Truths is to be understood at the end of every Jātaka; but we only mention it when it appears that it was blessed (to the conversion of some character in the Introductory Story).”
[314] These “Six” are noted characters in Buddhist legend. They are six bad monks, whose evil deeds and words are said to have given occasion to many a “bye-law,” if one may so say, enacted in the Vinaya Pitaka for the guidance of the members of the Buddhist Order of Mendicants.
[315] This was a December festival, held to celebrate the close of the season of WAS, the four (or, according to some authorities, three) months of rainy weather, during which the members of the Order had to stay in one place. The Buddha had spent WAS among the angels—not, of course, that he cared to go to heaven for his own sake, but to give the ignorantly happy and deluded angels an opportunity of learning how to forsake the error of their ways. In a subsequent form of this curious legend, whose origin is at present unknown, he is said to have descended into hell with a similar object. See Professor Cowell in the Indian Antiquary for 1879.
[316] It will be observed that the old woman’s ‘Blackie’ could understand what was said to him, and make his own meaning understood; but he could not speak.
[317] If Muṇika, the name of the Pig, is derived from the root MAR (B. R. No. 2)—as I think it must be, in spite of the single ṇ—it is a verbal noun derived from a past participle, meaning ‘cut into small pieces.’ The idea is doubtless of the small pieces of meat used for curry, as the Indians had no sausages. I could not dare to coin such a word as ‘Curry-bit-ling,’ and have therefore preserved the joke by using a word which will make it intelligible to European readers.