A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s3.t1.117

v2.c19.s3.t1.117

¹ We find the same arrangement in the Thāṇaṅga and Samavāyaṅga Suttas of the Jains. A section in the Mahābhārata, V, 33, 56-106, on worldly wisdom (nīti), placed in the mouth of Vidura, is arranged on exactly the same numerical principle. Even more archaic is the Brahmanical riddle game (Mahābh. III, 134) in which Aṣṭāvakra vanquishes the sophist Vandin who, though well versed in the enumeration of the things of which there are one, two, three, and so forth, cannot get past thirteen, whilst Aṣṭāvakra enumerates all the things of which there are thirteen. Number riddles and number litanies of this kind are also to be found in the literatures of other peoples. The best known is the so-called "Catholic Vesper" in which Christian dogmas are enumerated according to numbers one to twelve: "Good friend, I ask thee, Good friend, what askest thou? Tell me, what is one? One and one is the Lord God, and so on (K. *Simrock,* deutschen Volkslieder, Frankfurt a. M. 1851, pp. 520 ff.). There is a similar number litany in the Passover Hagada of the Jews. Cf. K. *Kohler* in Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland, 3, 1889, 234 ff. and G. *Léjeau* in Revue Celtique II, pp. 58 ff. There is a Greek fairy-tale (see J. G. v. *Hahn*, Griechische und Albanesische Märchen, Leipzig 1864, II, pp. 210 f.), which reminds us of Aṣṭāvakra. [^1): Aṅgutt., Vol. IV, p. 163 f. Cf. *La Vallée Poussin*, Transactions of the Third Internat. Congress for the History of Religions, Vol. II, p. 36. [^2): Cf. *Hardy* in Vol. V of the edition, Preface, p. ix f. [^3): See above, p. 56.