1. Shrikantha, "one whose cup contains good fortune" = born with a
silver spoon in his mouth.
2. The merchant class acquired an important position in India at
an early date, as the Manu concerns itself with laws for their
guidance. The Manu, however, distinctly defines trading as the
occupation of the third caste (i. 90), "The care of cattle, sacrifice,
reading the Vêda, the career of a merchant, the lending of gold and
silver, and the pursuit of agriculture shall be the occupation of
the Vaishja." Similarly in the Jalimâlâ legend given in Colebrooke's
"Miscellaneous Essays," it is said "The Lord of Creation viewing them
(the various castes) said, 'What shall be your occupation?' These
replied, 'We are not our own masters, O God. Command what we shall
undertake.' Viewing and comparing their labours he made the first
tribe superior over the rest. As the first had great inclination
for the divine sciences (brahmaveda) it was called Brahmana. The
protector from ill was Kshatriga (warrior). Him whose profession (vesa)
consists in commerce, and in husbandry, and attendance on cattle he
called Vaisga. The other should voluntarily serve the three tribes,
and therefore he became Sudra." That a Brahman's son, therefore,
should condescend to engage in trade must be ascribed either to the
degeneracy of later times or to the ignorance of or indifference to
Brahmanical peculiarities of the Buddhist tale-repeater; or else his
parents were of mixed castes.
In legendary tales Banig is a typical merchant, and the name
ultimately came to designate the subdivision of the Vaishja caste,
in which trading had become hereditary. The word is derived from
pani, which means both to buy and to play games of hazard, and ga,
born or descended; hence Banig meant, literally, merchant's son. This
designation later became corrupted into Banyan.
It is not possible to learn very much about the merchant's early
status, as the subject of trade would naturally seem unworthy
of frequent mention in the great epic poems; nevertheless the
Ramajana (ii. 83, v. 11) speaks of "the honourable merchants"
(naigamâh). Mercantile expeditions, especially by sea, however, partook
of the heroic, and as such find a place even in the Mâha Bhârata;
and there is a hymn in the Vêda (Rig. V. i. 116, 5) praising Asvin
for protecting Bhugju's hundred-oared ship through the immeasurable,
fathomless ocean, and bringing it back safely to land.
3. Apes enter frequently not only into the fables but into the
epic poetry of India. The Ramajana, narrating the spreading of the
Aryan Indians over the south and far-east, speaks of the country as
inhabited by apes, and of Rama taking apes for his allies; also,
on one occasion, of his re-establishing an ape-king in possession
of his previous dominions. Consult Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde,
i. 534, 535. Megasthenes mentions various kinds of apes and monkeys,
with, however, scarcely recognizable descriptions, in his enumeration
of the wild animals of India (Fragm. x. p. 410). Kleitarchos tells
that when Alexander had reached a hill in the neighbourhood of the
Hydaspes, he came upon a tribe of apes arranged in battle array,
looking so formidable that he was about to give the signal for
attacking them, but was withheld by the representations of Taxiles,
king of the neighbouring country of Taxila, who accompanied him
(Fragm. xvi. p. 80). The Pantcha-Tantra contains a fable in which
the King of Kamanapura establishes an ape for his bodyguard as more
faithful and efficient than man; a thief, however, brings a serpent
into the apartment, and at sight of the mortal enemy of his kind,
the ape runs away. Another fable of the same collection tells of
a Brahman who, having succeeded in rearing a flourishing garden of
melons, found them all devoured as soon as ripe by a party of apes,
nor was he able by any means to get rid of them. One day he laid
himself down hid amid the leafage as if he had been dead, but with a
stick in his hand ready to attack them when they approached. At first
they indeed took him for dead and were venturing close up to him, when
one of them espied the stick and cried to the others, "Dead men do not
carry arms," and with that they all escaped; and it was the same with
every trap he laid for them, by their wariness they evaded them all.
4. The Indian world of story abounds in tales in which the low notion
of expecting some advantage to accrue in this life is proposed as
the object and reward of good actions. Instances will doubtless
occur to the reader. The Pantcha-Tantra Collection contains one in
which an elephant is caught by a Khan out hunting, by being driven
into a deep dyke. He asks advice of a Brahman who passes that way,
as to how he is to extricate himself. "Now is the time," answers the
Brahman, "to recall if you have ever done good to any one, and if so
to call him to your aid." The elephant thereupon recalls that he once
delivered a number of rats whom a Khan had hunted and caught and shut
up in earthen jars by lifting the earthen jars with his trunk and
gently breaking them. He accordingly invokes the aid of these rats,
who come and gnaw away at the earth surrounding the dyke, till they
have made so easy a slope of it that the elephant can walk out.
Christianity fortunately proposes a higher motive for our good actions,
and the experience of life would make that derived from results to
be expected from gratitude a very poor one.
5. A story, with a precisely similar episode of the recovery of a
jewel by ancillary beasts, comes into the legend of another ruin of
the Italian Tirol.