Thanks and a rephrased inquiry

[aklujkar at unixg.ubc.ca]

Thanks to James Nye, Allen Thrasher, Royce Wiles, Asko Parpola and Georg
v.Simson for the bibliographic information they supplied.

Has anyone come across a jye.s.tha-putra-nyaaya? What are the proverbs,
particularly in Telugu, in which the eldest son is mentioned? I ask these
questions because, somewhat surprisingly, there was no response to the
following inquiry of mine: "Is there a proverb in (south?) Indian languages
to the effect that if the eldest son is humiliated (through disciplining or
depriving him of something), the younger two (less likely, three) are as
good as humiliated? What I am looking for is an equivalent to the Sanskrit
line jye.s.tha-putraavamaanena traya.h kupyanti sodaraaa.h. The context in
which this vacana or 'statementæ having the appearance of a proverb is
cited is this: The speaker is making the point that robbing someone who has
incalculable wealth earned legitimately is better than robbing someone who
has limited wealth and robbing someone whose wealth is earned
illegitimately. "

The intended parallelism seems to be that a victim (or only an apparent
victim) of robbery who has incalculable wealth earned legitimately is like
the eldest son.