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The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c9.s3.t8: Literature: Sanskrit

The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c9.s3.t8

Language
English

Literature: Sanskrit

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Sanskrit literature was being studied and cultivated in its various branches. The proficiency of the princes of the royal family and of the numerous scholars patronized by them in *Purāṇa*, *Śāstra*, and so on has been noticed above. The inscriptions bear evidence of the strong influence of the classics on the literary and epigraphical compositions of the time. The Mahākūṭa pillar inscription of Mangaleśa is a landmark in literary development since it shows that by about A.D. 600 the florid prose writing which is generally associated with the great Bāṇa, the court-poet of Harshavardhana of Northern India, had reached an advanced development in the south, for the inscription borrows freely striking terms and phrases from the *Arthaśāstra*, the *Rāmāyaṇa*, and the *Raghuvamśa* of Kālidāsa. The Jaina poet Ravikīrtti, the author of the Aihoḷe *praśasti* of Pulakēśin II, modelled his composition consciously, as Kielhorn has demonstrated, on the *digvijaya* of Raghu as described by Kālidāsa in the *Raghuvamśa*, and claims at the end of the inscription that he has attained a fame equal to that of Kālidāsa and Bhāravi. Though this is an extravagant claim, the composition is not devoid of literary merit and makes skilful use of several metres. The Gaṅga king Durvinīta, father-in-law and feudatory of Pulakēśin II, is said to have composed a work on Sanskrit grammer, and commented on that literary freak, the *Śabdāvatāra*, and commented on that literary freak, the fifteenth canto of the *Kirātārjunīya* of Bhāravi;¹ he seems also to have been the author of the earliest Sanskrit version, no longer extant, of the *Br̥hat-Kathā* of Guṇāḍhya. Vijayabhaṭṭārikā, the queen of Candrāditya, may well be identical, as P. V. Kane has suggested, with the poetess Vijayāṅkā or Vijjikā who claims to have been well beloved by the king of Karṇāṭa (*Karṇāṭarājapriyā*) and accuses the poet Daṇḍin of having described Sarasvatī, the goddess of learning, as all white, in ignorance of her true colour, dark like the petal of the blue lotus; the few verses attributed to her in the anthologies go far to justify the high praise bestowed on her by Rājaśekhara, an eminent literary critic of the tenth century A.D., who says that after Kālidāsa, the Karṇāṭa poetess of the name of Vijayā takes rank as the abode of the Vaidarbhī style of writing.² The two *Āryā* verses of Achalada on the triumph of the Bharata school of *nāṭya* (dance) must also be noted here, both for their literary quality and for their reference to a forgotten chapter in the history of the art and literature of the dance. The Jaina grammarian and divine, Pūjyapāda, the author of *Jainendravyākaraṇa*, a work on Sanskrit grammar, figures as the teacher of Niravadya-Udayadevapaṇḍita, who received the grant of a village from Vijayāditya when he was camping at Raktapura (Lakṣmeśvar) in Ś. 651 (A.D. 729).³ Another famous Jaina writer in Sanskrit was Somadevasūri who flourished more than two centuries later, was patronized by the Cāḷukyas of Vemulavāḍa, and was the author of the *Yaśastilaka-campū*, a romantic tale into which the author weaves much salutary moral instruction and propaganda against animal sacrifice and in favour of the tenets of Jainism; his second work, *Nītivākyāmṛta*, is much more interesting to the student of Indian political literature as it is really an *Arthaśāstra* suffused with the *dharmic* point of view. Somadeva’s vast learning and his great merits as a stylist are evident in every page of both his works.⁴

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¹ Keith’s doubts on this matter (*His. of Skt. Liter.*, p. xvii) are misplaced except in so far as they concern the evidence of the *Avantīsundarīkathā* and its *Sāra*.

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² Kane’s ed. *Sāhityadarpaṇa* (1923), pp. xl-xli; and V. Raghavan, *Sanskrit and Prakrit Poetesses*, QJMS, xxxv.

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³ DKD, p. 373; Rice, *Kan. Lit.*, pp. 26-27.

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⁴ Keith, *His. of Skt. Liter.*, pp. 333-6 and 463-4.

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Kannaḍa

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Of the literature in the language of the people, Kannaḍa, very little has survived except a few names from these early times, though evidence is not lacking that there must have been a considerable volume of prose and poetic works which had come into existence before Nr̥patunga, the Rāṣṭrakūṭa king, composed his *Kavirājamārga*, the earliest extant work on rhetoric in Kannaḍa. The Durvinīta mentioned in this work as one of the best writers of Kannaḍa prose may well be the Gaṅga contemporary and father-in-law of Pulakēśin II; if this was so, Durvinīta must be considered to have been equally proficient in Kannaḍa and in Sanskrit. Another celebrated writer was Śrīvardhadeva, also called Tumbuḷūrācārya from the place of his birth; he is known to have written an extensive work (96,000 verses) called *Cūḍāmaṇi* in the form of a commentary on the *Tattvārtha-mahāśāstra*. This work is no longer extant though the great Kannaḍa grammarian Bhaṭṭākalanka (A.D. 1604) knew the book and referred to it as the greatest work in the language.¹ Śyāmakundācārya, who is mentioned by later writers as an author in the Prākṛit, Sanskrit, and Karṇāṭa languages, also flourished about the same time as Tumbuḷūrācārya or perhaps a little later (c. A.D. 650).

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¹ Rice, op. cit., p. 27.

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Pampa, who says that his ancestors came from Vengi, was himself born in A.D. 902 and flourished at the court of Arikesari II of Vemulavāḍa. He composed two great poems in a single year at the comparatively early age of thirty-two; they are justly celebrated as among the greatest classics of Kannaḍa literature. His *Ādi-purāṇa* narrates the life story of the first *tīrthamkara* according to the Jaina tradition; the other work, *Vikramārjuna Vijaya*, contains the author's own version of a section of the *Mahābhārata* story, and is on that account often called *Pampa-bhārata*; in it the poet makes Arjuna the hero and identifies his patron Arikesari with Arjuna, which gives him the occasion for introducing at several points many interesting details of contemporary secular history. Critics have hailed Pampa unanimously as the most eminent among Kanarese poets.

Cites (14)