That Jātaka is an odd one, because, while the prose portion refers to a jackal, the verse portion (and the title) refer to a cat.The Bodhisatta is a mouse as big as a boar, who bites the throat of the scheming cat/jackal and kills it. Although it would be improbable for a mouse to kill a cat, a rat could certainly do it a lot of damage, and it takes quite a big or bold cat to take on a rat (though archaeological remains from elsewhere suggest that at this period the domestic cat (Felis catus) was still bigger on average than it is today.) The verse part of the Jātaka may reflect a period when the black rat (Rattus rattus) and (not coincidentally) the domestic cat had arrived in India on ships. (Merchant seafaring is quite a frequent theme in the Jātakas, perhaps reflecting the circles in which these stories arose.) In the prose portion of the Jātaka, which may be later, the cat has been replaced by another animal regarded as a schemer, and one more familiar in Indian fable.

Strangely, none of the story books I have seen that retell Jātaka tales for children seems to include a picture of the Bodhisatta as a giant rat biting the throat of a pussycat.

Valerie J Roebuck
Manchester, UK



On 27 Jun 2015, at 10:31, Philipp Maas <philipp.a.maas@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Prof. Slaje,
A story of a rat (or mouse) killing a jackal is narrated in the Bilarajataka (Jataka 128), possibly with the intention to communicate the message that a week but good character can overcome a strong but bad one.

Kind regards,

Philipp Maas

Von meinem iPod gesendet

Am 27.06.2015 um 09:33 schrieb Walter Slaje <slaje@kabelmail.de>:

Suresh:

> Does any other Indian language show an equivalent of śaśī-sarpa-nyāya?


Perhaps a “courageous-weak-female-conquers-physically-strong-male” paradigm is the original notion at its basis. This could have found various forms of expression, and the “śaśī-sarpa-nyāya” may very well have taken shape as a witty ad-hoc Sanskritization of internalized popular sayings. They might possibly draw on the behaviour of animals entirely different from hares and snakes. As stated initially, I was immediately reminded of Gandhiji’s “violence of the mouse against the cat”. On second thoughts however – inspired by the empirical evidence of the “Go, Mr. Bunny, kill that snake!” video – I have my doubts, whether such a nyāya would be conceivable at all. Is it likely that a mouse behaves violently against a cat, and that observations of that kind had really been made? Could Jan possibly contribute a live video footage to solve this question? :-)


I changed upon three instances using a “weaker female / stronger male” metaphor taken from the animal kingdom. The female (Queen Koṭā from Kashmir) is compared to a mouse, to a (female) jackal, and to a bird respectively, her male opponents however to a cat and a lion. Guess, who wins! I for one failed to find traces of heroic courage in it.

 

Regards,

WS

 

Jonarāja’s Rājataraṅgiṇī

 

saṅkaṭāt kampaneśas tāṃ kulāyād iva pakṣiṇīm |

jīvagrāhaṃ gṛhītvātha kārāpañjaram ānayat || JRT 286 ||

„[But] the commander captured her alive out of a defile as one catches a bird out of its nest [and] then threw her into prison [just as one throws a bird into] a cage.“

 
 

nivṛttanetracārasya capalatvaikakāraṇam |

ākhur bilagato votoś Śāhamerasya sābhavat || [Ps-JRT 17, B 341] ||

„[Since] swift movement would set [someone’s] resting eyes in motion, [Koṭā] behaved towards Šāh Mīr like a mouse in a hole towards a cat.“

 

niruddhe balinā koṭaguhābhre matiśālinā |

nṛsiṃhenābhajat Koṭā sṛgālīva muhur bhayam || JRT 302 ||

„Almost like a jackal Koṭā was suddenly seized with fear when the mighty, clever man, who resembled a lion, besieged [her] towering refuge.“





2015-06-26 14:08 GMT+02:00 Suresh Kolichala <suresh.kolichala@gmail.com>:
Valerie: aren't black-naped hares (Lepus nigricollis), also known as Indian hares, native to India? As you may know, Dravidian languages have a non-IA word for rabbit/hare: *mucal/muyal (Telugu kundēlu is an interesting exception). Are there any other non-IE words for hare in other Indian languages? I think the words kharabhaka/ kharagoś  (खरगोश) 'donkey's ears'  are of recent origin, and perhaps have a Persian connection. 

Elliot: You are right about the language in the video. It is indeed Telugu -- distinctly the Telangana variety. The kids are indeed speaking Americanized English. They must be one of the Telugu-American immigrant families.  

Walter:  I heard mahānasa-śaśa-nyāya (rabbit in the kitchen -- easy to catch) and śaśa-viṣāṇa-nyāya (a hare's horn -- a term for an impossibility), but not the one you mentioned. I know śaśi as moon  (in compound form forśaśin is moon), but not as a feminine form of śaśa. Does any other Indian language show an equivalent of śaśī-sarpa-nyāya?

Suresh.

On Fri, Jun 26, 2015 at 2:20 AM, Elliot Stern <emstern@verizon.net> wrote:
The National Geographic Society identifies the rabbit as a female cottontail rabbit and the snake as a black rat snake {http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/150624-rabbits-snakes-animals-science-nation-video/). It places the video source somewhere in the eastern United States. While I have not set foot in India since 1982, I believe the architectural features of the house and the lush green grass  in the video are more likely to be American than Indian. 

The South Indian language is possibly Telugu. ammā is mother and nannā is father. To my ear, the child’s English language  sounds more  American than Indian.


Elliot M. Stern
552 South 48th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19143-2029
United States of America
telephone: 215-747-6204
mobile: 267-240-8418
emstern@verizon.net

On 26 Jun  2015, at 01:40, Valerie Roebuck <vjroebuck@btinternet.com> wrote:

One odd thing: the animal in the video does indeed appear to be a rabbit, as distinct from a hare. I thought that rabbits were not native to India, and that the word śaśa referred to a hare (the words ‘hare’ and ‘śaśa' probably being cognates). Of course, they may well behave in the same way when their young are threatened, but they are different species.

Valerie J Roebuck
Manchester, UK

On 25 Jun 2015, at 23:49, Walter Slaje <slaje@kabelmail.de> wrote:

This video is so convincing that the idea of a śaśīsarpanyāya develops all by itself, even without ever having heard of it before. Great!

Jan's likely assumption that this textually unattested nyāya might "have been based on actual observation" reminds one all the more painfully of our insufficient knowledge of realia and the material culture of pre-modern India.

Speaking of nyāyas - and we may as well include the kavi-samayas, the ideological and material roots of which still remain unexplored by and large -, I should like to draw your attention to a promising rumour according to which the Indological Section of the DMG (German Oriental Society) consider a prize competition for cracking the history of development of some of the toughest nyāya- and kavisamaya-nuts. This might possibly materialize in the broader context of the 33rd Deutscher Orientalistentag to be held from the 18th to the 22nd of September 2017 in Jena, Germany (the domain of, among others, Otto von Böhtlingk and the Schlegel brothers).
I am not well informed enough, but would advise an occasional glance at the homepage of the Section (http://www.dmg-web.de/indologie/index.html) in the run-up to the Orientalistentag in 2017. So, plenty of time for warming-up.

Many thanks, and kind regards,
WS


2015-06-25 13:40 GMT+02:00 Patrick Olivelle <jpo@uts.cc.utexas.edu>:
Walter and all:

I do not know abut this maxim, but this real life video of a mother rabbit doing just what the maxim say could be instructive. It was probably filmed somewhere in south India, I am not sure of the language of the people taping it.

Patrick


The South Indian language is possibly Telugu. 

On Jun 25, 2015, at 3:24 AM, Walter Slaje <slaje@kabelmail.de> wrote:

Dear Colleagues,


I am searching for textual evidence of a little-known Nyāya.


In an article by Soutik Biswas “Why India's sanitation crisis kills women” (BBC News India, 30 May 2014), it was claimed that “Several studies have shown that women without toilets at home are vulnerable to sexual violence when travelling to and from public facilities or open fields. [...]“. One mother told researchers, “We have had one-on-one fights with thugs in order to save our daughters from getting raped. It then becomes a fight that either you [the thug] kill me to get to my daughter, or you back off.”


This courageous behaviour of mothers fighting for her girls at the risk of their own lives reminds one of the śaśī-sarpa-nyāya (“the bunny and the snake”), known to some by hearsay only, but not (yet) traceable. The generalization here lies certainly in the fact that a (physically weaker) female (śaśī) effectively fights a (physically stronger) male (sarpa). The latter would be the aggressor(s), the victim(s) the (female) bunny and/or her young.


The rare feminine formation śaśī causes no real trouble, as occurrences of the word are anyway testified in the Mokṣopāya (VI.34.103) and in Ratnākaraśānti’s Vidagdhavismāpana (175) [written communication by Roland Steiner].


In connection of the very idea behind this nyāya, I should also like to add that Gandhi could indeed have been aware of a similar popular maxim, as he refers explicitly to “the violence of the mouse against the cat“, writing that


“A girl who attacks her assailant with her nails, if she has grown them, or with her teeth, if she has them [? W.S.], is almost non-violent (...). Her violence is the violence of the mouse against the cat.“ (Harijan, 08-09-1940).


On the other hand, Gandhi had

„(...) always held that it is physically impossible to violate a woman against her will. (…) If she cannot meet the assailant’s physical might, her purity will give her the strength to die before he succeeds in violating her. (…) I know that women are capable of throwing away their lives for a much lesser purpose.” (Harijan, 25-08-1940).


The statement in the last paragraph, only cited for its somewhat conflicting character with the first one, would, if further pursued, however lead into an entirely different matter, better not to be touched.


I would be fully satisfied if someone among this learned community could contribute to the mysterious śaśīsarpanyāya, on- or off-list.

 

Thanking you,

WS

 
-----------------------------
Prof. Dr. Walter Slaje
Hermann-Löns-Str. 1
D-99425 Weimar
Deutschland

Ego ex animi mei sententia spondeo ac polliceor
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sed quo magis veritas propagetur et lux eius, qua salus
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