The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c6.s1.2

c6.s1.2

XVI. On a medallion which can hardly with propriety be reproduced (CUNNINGHAM, XXVI, 7), we witness the conception and birth of the *rishi* Ṛiśyaśṛinga (Antelope-horn) or Ekaśṛinga (Unicorn), as celebrated in the Brahmanic epic as in the Buddhist legend. Son of an anchorite and a roe, he knows nothing of a sex to which he is not even indebted for his mother, and consequently he will be an easy prey to the first women he meets. On this common trunk are grafted two groups of stories. In the first, the young hermit is scarcely adolescent and lives with his father. A neighbouring king, in order to put an end to a famine, or simply because he has no son, forms the design of taking him for his son-in-law : and his own daughter, or, in the less ancient versions, some courtesans charge themselves with the task of leading him astray and bringing him back to the court (*Jāt.* 526; *Mahāvastu*, III, 143; *Mahābhārata*, III, 110-113 etc), Without great difficulty they succeed, as soon as the father has turned his back, being helped as much as they could desire by the naive candour of the young man, who as yet has seen nothing of the world, for whom a rebounding ball seems a marvel, who takes cakes for delicious fruits without pips, and who calls carriages « moving huts ». He apprehends still other causes of amazement, not less ingenious, but already less innocent, at the aspect, so new to him, of his feminine visitors: and you can easily conceive that this theme of the spontaneous awakening of the sexual instinct in the most ignorant of young men should have served as an example to Boccacio and for a story to La Fontaine (*Contes*, III, 1, « The Geese of Brother Philip », taken from the preamble to the fourth day of the *Decameron*).