A Disputed Item in the Citta-Saṃbhūijja (Uttarajjhāyā 13)

The dialogue between the brothers Citta and Saṃbhūta in the Buddhist and Jain canons (Jātaka 498 and canto 13 of Uttarajjhāyā,) has been presented, apparently definitively, by Ernst Leumann as an episode extracted from a pre-existing corpus of Brahmadatta legends. The notion of such a source extraneous to the texts in question has opened the way to a difference of opinion as to who speaks first in the Triṣṭubh dialogue. Indian tradition and Hermann Jacobi’s translation assign the initial Triṣṭubh verse to Citta, but then have some difficulty in making sense of the wording. Leumann, followed by Ludwig Alsdorf, assigned it to Saṃbhūta, incarnate as King Brahmadatta. It seems, however, possible to resolve the discrepancy in favour of the tradition