Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c3.s2.t1.22

c3.s2.t1.22

With Dhanañjaya Koravya is mentioned his almost inseparable companion Vidhurapaṇḍita¹⁵ who is generally known as a minister and a teacher of law, morality and polity. One *Jātaka*¹⁶ prose unnecessarily makes him the *purohita* of a king of Benares, though the *gāthās* do not suggest anything of the kind. Similarly the prose of the *Vidhurapaṇḍita Jātaka*¹⁷ seeks to describe him as a Brāhmaṇa and the son of a Brāhmaṇa Canda, while the *gāthās* are clear in representing him as a Kuru councillor, holding the status of a noble of the royal family of the Kurus, though born in a natural state of servitude¹ That he was born of a slave is proved by his own declaration ‘addhā hi yonito aham pi jāto’,² thus agreeing with the Epic account of his birth, though related in the usual miraculous manner.³