De: Balogh Dániel <danbalogh@GMAIL.COM>
Asunto: [INDOLOGY] Sesa and Kurma carrying the Earth
A: INDOLOGY@liverpool.ac.uk
Fecha: martes, 18 de diciembre de 2012, 9:39

Dear All,
though I've been reading you for a while, this is my first letter to the list so maybe I'd better introduce myself.
I'm Dániel (Daniel) Balogh from Hungary, I did my MA in Indology in Budapest, graduating in 2002. I've worked for the Clay Sanskrit Library and done some freelancing as well as a lot of non-scholarly work. Then two years ago I went back to university, still in Budapest, to work on a PhD under Csaba Dezső. My research topic is the Mudrārākṣasa, focussing on intertextual issues and the reception of the play in pre-modern India.

Now to the question on which I'd be interested in some opinions. There is a verse in the Mudrārākṣasa (2.19 in Hillebrandt's edition) that mentions Śeṣa bearing the earth (the context is that worthy people never give up, no matter how hard their task is): kiṃ śeṣasya bharavyathā na vapuṣi kṣmāṃ na kṣipaty eṣa yat...
There is an almost identical verse in (some MSS of) Bhartṛhari 's śataka s (number 232 in Kosambi's edition), which reads kūrmasya instead of śeṣasya .

I've been wondering if there are any early textual references to Kūrma carrying the earth. Also, what if anything could have been the motivation for an author or copyist to change kūrma to śeṣa or vice versa, and which direction of change would have been more likely? (Note that apparently śeṣa is not attested in any Bhartṛhari MSS, nor is kūrma found in any MSS of the Mudrārākṣasa, so the two traditions seem both pretty strong.)

Thank you for any suggestions,
Daniel