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History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c15.s2.t12: Literary activity at Yaśovarman’s court

History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c15.s2.t12

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Literary activity at Yaśovarman’s court

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Like many well-known kings of ancient India Yaśovarman was both a poet and a patron of letters, and the Rājatarangiṇī alludes to this in the following passage :

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“Kavir-Vākpatirāja-Śrī-Bhavabhūty-ādi sevitaḥ,
Jito yayau Yaśovarmā tadguṇa-stutivanditām.”

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i.e., “the poet Yaśovarman, who had been served by Vākpatirāja, the illustrious Bhavabhūti, and other poets, (himself) became by his defeat (at the hands of Lalitāditya) a panegyrist of his (Lalitāditya’s) virtues.”² Unfortunately, there is no extant work which we can attribute to him with certainty, although the play entitled Rāmābhyudaya³ and some poems cited in Vallabhadeva’s Subhāṣitāvali are said to have been the compositions of one Yaśovarman, identified with his Kanauj namesake. The stanza also gives us the names of two literary geniuses—Vākpatirāja and Bhavabhūti⁴ —who adorned his court, and, as we shall see below, Kalhaṇa’s testimony is amply confirmed by the literary tradition of the Jains and by Vākpati himself. Of the two, Bhavabhūti was the more gifted poet and Vākpati frankly acknowledges his debt to him saying : “even now in his rugged compositions excellences are sparkling like drops of the *amrita* liquid of poetry, which have come out of the ocean (called) Bhavabhūti.” He is the author of the three well-known Sanskrit plays, *Mālatīmādhava*, *Mahāvīracarita* and *Uttararāmacarita*. Hertel is of opinion that “all of them must have been composed in Kanauj” in order to be performed “before an audience of pilgrims in the temple of Kālapriyanātha, who evidently was Yaśovarman’s family deity.”¹ It is, however, usually assumed that the Lord Kālapriya is the same as the Mahākāleśvara, whose famous shrine at Ujjain in Malwa is mentioned by Kālidāsa (*Raghuvamśa*, VI, 34), and Bāṇa (*Kādambarī*, p. 53, ed. Peterson) etc. But this identification seems inadmissible inasmuch as Bhavabhūti tells us in the *Mālatīmādhava* that his ancestral home in Padmapura, corresponding with modern Padmāvatī or Narvar in the Gwalior state,² is “on the road to the south” with reference to the shrine of the Lord Kālapriya. We have, therefore, to look for some place to the north of Padmāvatī, and it is quite likely that Yaśovarman, who was perhaps a Śaiva or a Śākta (witness his visit to the goddess Vindhyavāsinī) had a temple of this description in the capital also.³ The

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² Bk. IV, verse 144, (Stein, p. 134).

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³ Ind. Ant., XLI (1912), p. 141.

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⁴ Prof. Max-Müller in interpreting the above verse made Rājyaśrī a separate poet (India, What can it teach us?, p. 334). But

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¹ *Asia Major*, Vol. I, pp. 12-13.

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² *Arch. Surv. Ind. Rep.*, 1862-65, Vol. II, pp. 307-08.

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³ Some scholars, however, think that the temple of Kālapriya was in Kalpi (U. P.).

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Sanskrit literature knows of no poet with this name. The word *rāja* here is to be connected with Vākpati, and Śrī is only an honorific prefixed to the name of Bhavabhūti. It is significant that in the *Gauḍavaho* Vākpati speaks of himself as Vappairāya or Vākpati-rāja.

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genius of Bhavabhūti has received its full meed of appreciation from Sanskrit authors. Rājaśekhara calls him “an incarnation of Vālmīki” in his *Bāla-Rāmāyaṇa*¹ and some critics even declare that Bhavabhūti excels Kālidāsa in the *Uttararāmacarita*.² The other literary luminary of Yaśovarman’s court was Vappaīrāya or Vākpati, described in the *Bappabhaṭṭacarita* as “the head-jewel of the Kṣatriyas and born of the Paramāra clan.” He appears to have enjoyed royal favour to a greater extent than his senior Bhavabhūti. Vākpati calls himself the king’s “paṇayi lavo” (literally a particle of a favourite friend), and claims that he was at the head of the poets (Kaī-rāya i.e., Kavirāja).³ He wrote in Prakrit, and according to the Jain legends he was at first in the service of the king of Gauḍa at Lakṣamaṇāvatī, and thence passed to the court of the victorious Yaśovarman. It is alleged that in the latter part of his life he became a convert to Jainism, and after undergoing severe penances in Mathura voluntarily starved himself to death (*anaśana*) in accordance with the Jain rule for men desirous of making a good end. Before writing the *Gauḍavaho* Vākpati composed a poem entitled *Mahu-Maha-Viyaya* (Madhu-Matha-Vijaya). He considered it to be his best work;⁴ but its text has not been discovered, and nothing can be said of it except that it probably dealt with the death of the demon Madhu at the hands of Viṣṇu. At present Vākpati’s only extant work is the *Gauḍavaho* comprising 1209 couplets, which, as conjectured by Dr. Keith, was probably “left unfinished owing to Yaśovarman's death;” or it may be a “series of excerpts dealing with those topics which the Pandits liked, omitting tedious historical details.”¹

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¹ I, 16; see also *Bālabhārata*, I, 12.

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² Cf. “Uttare Rāma-carite Bhavabhūtir viśiṣyate.”

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³ Kalhaṇa’s way of mentioning also supports this conclusion, as according to Vārttika 4 to Pāṇini II. 2. 34 that which is more “*abhyarhita*” or respected should come first. But we may at the same time urge that no undue emphasis should be laid on such a subtle point of grammar.

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⁴ *Gauḍavaho*, stanza 69.

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¹ Keith, *A History of Sanskrit Literature* (1928), p. 150.

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