Maitraak.sa-jyotika

[czm1 at cornell.edu]

        Professor Aklujkar has made a useful and plausible suggestion that
would read this unusual term in a way more suitably parallel with the
outcome Manu predicts for the fallen Brahmin in a neighboring line.
        Note, however, that the comm. I was referring to is not Kulluka but
Medhatithi, who does indeed suggest, among other possibilities, that the
term refers to a creature with an eye (jyotir dr.s.t.au) in his paayu.  And
surely it is possible that Kulluka also means this, for surely jyotis can
as easily mean "light of intelligence/sight," as "flame," as Amara tells
us.  So Buhler has (at least optionally) understood Kulluka and Medhatithi
and Raghava as well. (Doniger here follows Buhler.)
        I would be interested to know whether there are in fact many Bv.
compounds with jyotis as the second member that mean "having a flame as/in
___." I have not found any. I can only find Brhadaranyaka Up. 4.3.3ff,
which of course I would be very unhappy translating : "when the sun has
set, Yajnavalkya, in what does a man have a flame ?" or worse, "... where
does a man have a burning sensation ?"
        In any case the attestation of this peculiar compound is limited to
this one passage.  The dictionaries do not even attempt to render it. Even
maitraaks.a does not seem to be attested elsewhere. No one has sent me
other explicit examples of the "anal eye" from their readings.  And so, I
agree that we are better off following Aklujkar's analysis, setting aside
this unemphatic suggestion of the commentators, with the result that the
irregular notion of an anal eye is eliminated from the corpus of Indic
literature.  If so my proposed parallel with European sources, much
discussed of late in European Medieval studies, is also voided.  Well, tant
pis.
C. Minkowski,
Cornell