The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c10.62

c10.62

little further (p. 41, l. 23) glosses his « six tusks » by « two tusks of six colours »; for you know that the latest mode was to ascribe to him only one pair. Where the good monk will perhaps seem to go rather far, is when he translates *khura* by *kakaca* (p. 52, l. 9), and unblushingly essays to make you believe that knives are saws, in other words, that chalk is cheese. But soon you will content yourself with shrugging your shoulders before this strange and systematic perversion of the text which he was supposed to interpret; the fact is that you read his hand in advance and see why, before allowing the hunter to descend into the ditch specified by stanza 23, he believes it necessary to clothe him in the *kāshāya* of a monk (p. 49, l. 8); why, when according to stanza 24 the whole troop is scattered to the « eight cardinal points », he considers it more suitable to detain by the side of the wounded one at least his faithful wife (p. 50, l. 9); why, a few lines further down, he has her brutally driven away, for fear she should punish the assassin (p. 50, l. 19), etc. And when finally to stanza 32 — which states merely that the hunter took his knife, cut off the elephant’s tusks, and departed — he openly opposes (p. 52) the absurd and pathetic account which we have already analysed (¹), the measure is heaped up and the cause decisively heard. If the *gāthās* have all the characteristics of an ancient popular plaint, which the barbarity of the proceeding employed by the hunter to get possession of the ivory forces us to declare anterior to the Barhut medallion,