episode besides the original one we have, with other evidence of moral conscience, to bridge the gap between the first recorded telling and the later version that explicitly calls out for justice. There is a Jain text from the sixteenth century that begins much like the Mahabharata story of Ekalavya, but then gives the protagonist a different name and veers in a very different direction: In Hastinapura, Arjuna learned the entire science of archery from Drona and became, as it were, another image [murti] of Drona, and honoured him with many gems, pearls, gold, elephants, horses and so forth. The guru said to him, ‘Arjuna, choose a boon.’ Arjuna replied, ‘Sir, if you are satisfied with me, let there be no one but me who knows such a science of archery.’ Thinking, ‘The words of great gurus can never fail to come true,’ Drona agreed. One day, a certain tribal, living 140/41
on the banks of the Ganges, came and asked Drona to be his guru; obtaining his promise, he went back to his own place and made an image of Drona out of mud, and honoured it with flowers and sandalwood and so forth, and said, ‘Drona, give me the knowledge of archery,’ and practised the science of archery in front of him. And with his mind and heart full of the emotion of passionate devotion to him [bhakti], the tribal after a certain time became like a second Arjuna. One day, Arjuna, following Drona who had gone in front to take a bath in the Ganges, saw that the mouth of his own dog was filled with arrows that had not pierced his upper lip, lower lip, palate, tongue or teeth. Thinking, ‘No one but me has such a power,’ he was amazed, and going forward by following along the arrows from his dog’s mouth he saw the tribal and asked him, ‘Who shot these arrows into the
The Book of Aleph