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A History of Sanskrit Literature: Classical Period, Vol. I c6: Chapter IV. The Successors of Kālidāsa in Poetry

A History of Sanskrit Literature: Classical Period, Vol. I c6

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Contents

Chapter IV. The Successors of Kālidāsa in Poetry

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The difficulty of fixing an exact chronology, as well as the paucity and uncertainty of material, does not permit an orderly historical treatment of the poets and dramatists who, in all probability, flourished between Kalidasa, on the one hand, and Magha and Bhavabhûti, on the other. It must have been a period of great vitality and versatility; for there is not a single department of literature which is left untouched or left in a rudimentary condition. But a great deal of its literary productions is probably lost, and the few that remain do not adequately represent its many-sided activity. We know nothing, for instance, of the extensive Prakrit literature, which presupposes Hala's poetical compilation, and which sums up its folk-tale in the lost collection of Guṇāḍhya's *Bṛhatkathā*. No early collection also of the popular tale in Sanskrit has survived; and of the possible descendants of the beast-fable, typified by the *Pañcatantra*, we know nothing. Concurrently with the tradition of Prakrit love-poetry in the stanza-form, illustrated by the *Sattasaī* of Hala, must have started the same tradition in Sanskrit, which gives us the early *Śataka* of Amaru and which is followed up by those of Bhartṛhari and others; but the exact relationship between the two traditions is unknown. The origin of the religious and gnomic stanzas, such as we find crystallised in the Stotra-Śatakas of Mayūra and Bāṇa and the reflective Śatakas of Bhartṛhari, is equally obscure. Nor do we know much about the beginnings of the peculiar type of the Sanskrit prose romance; and we possess no earlier specimens of them than the fairly mature works of Daṇḍin, Bāṇa and Subandhu, who belong to this period. The dramatic works of Bhāsa and Kālidāsa must have inspired many a dramatist, but with the exception of Śūdraka, Viśākhadatta, Harṣa and the writers of four early Monologue Plays (Bhāṇas), ascribed respectively to Vararuci, Śūdraka, Iśvaradatta and Śyamilaka, all other names have perished; while Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa probably, and Bhavabhūti certainly, come at the end of this period. The number of early poetical works in Sanskrit, the so-called Mahākāvyas, is still fewer. If the poetical predecessors of Kālidāsa have all disappeared, leaving his finished achievement in poetry to stand by itself, this is still more the case with his succesors. Bhāravi, Bhaṭṭi, Kumāradāsa and Māgha, with just a few minor poets, practically complete the list of the composers of the Mahākāvya of this period. With the example of a consummate master of poetry to guide them, the general level of merit should have been fairly high and wide-spread; but, since much is apparently lost, the solitary altitudes become prominent and numerous in our survey.

1. The Erotic Śatakas of Amaru and Bhartrhari

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Although love-poetry blooms in its fullness in the Sanskrit literature, more than in the Vedic and Epic, its earliest specimens are lost. It should not be supposed that the passionate element in human nature never found expression. The episode of the love of Nanda and Sundarī painted by Aśvaghoṣa, the erotic theme of the poem of Ghaṭakarpara, as well as the very existence of the *Megha-dūta*, show that erotic poetry could not have been neglected. Love may not yet have come to its own in the Kunstpoesie, the polished and cultured Kāvya; but the example of Hāla's *Sattasaī*, whose stanzas are predominantly erotic, makes it possible that in folk-literature, the tradition of which is at least partially preserved in Prakrit, it finds an absorbing theme. The Prakrit poetry here is doubtless as conventional as Sanskrit, and is not folk-literature in its true sense; but it is clear that, while these early Prakrit stanzas, popular among the masses, have love for their principal subject, the early Sanskrit poems, so far as they have survived, do not often accept it as their exclusive theme. There is indeed no evidence to show that the Prakrit love-lyric is the prototype of the Sanskrit, but the presumption is strong that the erotic sentiment, which had diffused itself in the popular literature, survived in Prakrit poetry, and gradually invaded the courtly Sanskrit Kāvya, which provided a naturally fertile soil for it, and of which it ultimately became the almost universal theme.

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It is remarkable, however, that, with the exception of a few works like the *Megha-dūta*, the Ghaṭakapara monody and the *Gīta-govinda*, which, again, are not unalloyed love-poems, the Sanskrit erotic poetry usually takes the form, not of a systematic well-knit poem, but of a single poetical stanza standing by itself, in which the poet delights to depict a single phase of the emotion or a single situation within the limits of a finely finished form. Such is the case mostly with the seven hundred Prakrit stanzas, which pass under the name of Hāla Sātavāhana. If in Prikrit the highest distinction belongs to Hāla's *Sattasaī* for being a collection which gives varied and charming expression to the emotion of love, the distinction belongs in Sanskrit without question¹ to the *Śataka* of Amaru, about whose date and personality, however, as little is known as about those of Hāla. It is a much smaller work, but it is no less distinctive and delightful.

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¹ Although the commentator Ravicandra finds a philosophical meaning in Amaru's stanzas! And Vemabhūpāla, another commentator, would take the work to be merely a rhetorical text-book of the same type as Rudra Bhaṭṭa's *Śṛṅgāra-tilaka*, meant to illustrate the various classes of the Nāyikā and the diversity of their amorous conditions!

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A *Śataka*, meaning a century of detached stanzas, is usually regarded as the work of a single poet, although it is probable that Hāla's seven centuries, in the main form an anthology. The form, however, allows easy interpolation; and most of the early Śatakas contain much more than a hundred stanzas. It is not always possible, however, for several reasons,¹ to separate the additions with certainty, and arrive at a definitive text. The *Amaru-śataka*,² for instance, is known to exist in at least four recensions,³ in which the text fluctuates between totals of 96 and 115 stanzas,⁴ the number of stanzas common to all the recensions, but given in varying sequence, being only 51. The uncertainty of the text not only makes an estimate of the work difficult, but also diminishes the value of any chronological conclusion which may be drawn from the citation of a particular stanza in later works. Vāmana's quotation,⁵ for instance, in the beginning of the 9th century, of three stanzas without naming the work or the author, establishes nothing, although these stanzas occur in the present text of Amaru's *Śataka*. The earliest mention of Amaru as a poet of eminence is found in the middle of the 9th century in Ānandavardhana's work,⁶ but it is of little assistance, as Amaru is perhaps a much earlier writer.

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¹ The attribution in the anthologies, which often quote from Amaru, is notoriously unreliable; and there is a great deal of divergence regarding the number and sequence of stanzas in the texts of the commentators and in the manuscripts of the work.

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² Ed. R. Simon, in four recensions (Roman characters), Kiel 1893 (Cf. *ZDMG*, XLIX, 1895, p. 577f); ed. Calcutta 1808 (see J. Gildemeister, *Bibliothecae Sanskritae*, Bonn 1847, p. 73, no. 162), with the comm. of Ravicandra (*alias* Jñānānanda Kalādhara); ed. Durgaprasad, with comm. of Arjunavarmadeva, with addl. stanzas from commentators and anthologies, NSP, 3rd ed., Bombay 1916 (1st ed., 1889).

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³ Viz., South Indian (comm. Vemabhūpāla and Rāmānandanātha), Bengal (comm. Ravicandra), West Indian (comm. Arjunavarmadeva and Kokasambhava), and Miscellaneous (comm. Rāmarudra, Rudradeva, etc.). Simon bases his text chiefly on the South Indian recension, but it hardly supersedes the text of Arjunavarmadeva of Dhārā (circa 1215 A.D.), who is the oldest known commentator. No certainty, of course, is possible without further critical examination of materials.

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⁴ Arjunavarman's printed text contains 102 stanzas; in the NSP. (Bombay) ed., the appendices add 61 verses from other commentators and anthologies. Aufrecht's suggestion (*ZDMG*, XXVII, p. 7f), on the analogy of one-metre Śatakas of Bāṇa and Mayūra, that only stanzas in the Śārdūlavikrīḍita metre are original, would give us about 54 to 61 in recensions i-iii, and only 33 in recension iv. For the anthology stanzas, some of which are fine pieces, but ascribed sometimes to other authors, see Thomas, *Kvs*, p. 22f; some of these are not traceable in the printed text; they are in varied metres.

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⁵ Ed. Simon, nos. 16, 30, 89 = Vāmana, *Kāvyālaṃkāra*, iii. 2. 4; iv. 3. 12; v. 2. 8.

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⁶ *Dhvanyāloka ad* iii. 7.

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The suggestion that he is later than Bhartṛhari proceeds chiefly on the debatable ground of style and technique; but after the poetic art of Kālidāsa, elaboration and finish of expression may be expected in any writer, and need not prove anything. Even if Amaru is later than Bhartṛhari, the works of both exhibit certain charactersistics which would preclude a date later than this period, and probably they could not have been very far apart from each other in time.

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Amaru is less wide in range than Hāla, but he strikes perhaps a deeper and subtler note. Amaru's poems lack a great deal of the homeliness and rough good sense of Hāla's erotic stanzas; but they do not present, as more or less Hāla's verses do, the picture of simple love set among simple scenes. Amaru describes, with great delicacy of feeling and gracefulness of imagery, the infinite moods and fancies of love, its changes and chances, its strange vagaries and wanton wiles, its unexpected thoughts and unknown impulses, creating varied and subtle situatione. His language, with all the resources of Sanskrit, is carefully studied, but not extravagantly ornate; and his gift of lyric phrasing gives it the happy touch of ease and naturalness. Amaru does not confine himself to the narrow limits of Hāla's slow-moving moric stanza, but appears to allow himself greater metrical variety and more freedom of space. His employment of long sonorous metres, as well as short lyric measures,¹ not only relieves the monotony of metrical effect, but adds richness, weight and music to his little camoes of thought and feeling.

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¹ The metres employed in their order of frequency are: Śārdūlavikrīḍita, Hariṇī, Śikhariṇī, Mandākrāntā, Sragdharā, Vasantilaka and Mālinī; while Drutavilambita, Vaktra and Vaṁśasthavila occur sporadically in some recensions only. See Simon's metrical analysis p. 46.

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In spirit of inequalities, almost every stanza in this collection possesses a charm of its own;² and the necessity of compressing synthetically one whole idea or image within the limits of a single stanza not only gives a precision and restrained elegance to the diction, but also presents, in each stanza, a complete picture in a finely finished form. In this art of miniature word-painting, of which we have already spoken, Amaru unquestionably excels. The love depicted in his stanzas is often youthful and impassioned, in which the sense and the spirit meet, with all the emotions of longing, hope, ecstasy, jealousy, anger, disappointment, despair, reconciliation and fruition. Amaru's world is indeed different from ours, but his pictures are marked by a spirit of closeness to life and common realities, not often seen in the laboured and sustained masterpieces of this period, as well as by an emotional yet picturesque directness, by a subtle harmony of sound and sense, and by a freedom from mere rhetoric,—qualities which are not entirely devoid of appeal to modern taste. But, on the surface, the light of jewelled fancy plays, and makes beautiful even the pains and pangs which are inseparable from the joys and hopes of love. It is not love tossed on the stormy sea of manhood and womanhood, nor is it that infinite passion and pain of finite hearts which lead to a richer and wider life. But, as we have already said, the Sanskrit poet delights in depicting the playful moods of love, its aspects of Līla, in which even sorrow becomes a luxury. When he touches a deeper chord, the tone of earnestness is unmistakable, but its poignancy is rendered pleasing by a truely poetic enjoyment of its tender and pathetic implications. Rightly does Ānandavardhana praise the stanzas of Amaru as containing the veritable ambrosia of poetry; and in illustrating the theme of love as a sentiment in Sanskrit poetry, all writers on Poetics have freely used Amaru as one of the original and best sources. In Sanskrit sentimental poetry, Amaru should be regarded as the herald of a new development, of which the result is best seen in the remarkable fineness, richness of expression and delicacy of thought and feeling of the love-poems of later Śatakas, of the numerous anthologies, and even of the poetical drama.

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² For some specimens, with translation, S. K. De, *Treatment of Love in Sanskrit Literature*, Calcutta 1929, p. 28f; C. R. Narsimha Sarma, *Studies in Sanskrit Lit.*, Mysore 1936, pp. 1-30.

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The same traits as we notice in the *Śataka* of Amaru are found more or less in later centuries of love-poems, among which the *Śṛṅgāra-śataka*¹ of Bhartṛhari must be singled out, not only for its early date and literary excellence, but also for the interest which attaches to the legends surrounding the mysterious personality of the author. Tradition ascribes to him also two other Śatakas, on wise conduct (*Nīti*) and resignation (*Vairāgya*), respectively, as well as an exposition of the philosophy of speech, entitled *Vākyapadīya*.² Although the last named work shows little of the softer gift of poetry, it is not inherently impossible for the poet to turn into a philosophical grammarian. From the Buddhist pilgrim Yi-tsing we know that a grammarian Bhartṛhari, apparently the author of the *Vākyapadīya*, died about 651 A.D.; and even if his reference does not make it clear whether Bhartṛhari was also the poet of the three Śatakas, his ignoring or ignorance of them need not be exaggerated. Bhartṛhari, the grammarian, was probably a Buddhist,³ but the fact that the Śatakas reveal a Śaiva of the Vedānta persuasion⁴ does not necessarily justify the supposition of two Bhartṛharis; for, apart from the question of interpolation, Harṣa likewise invokes the Buddha in his *Nāgānanda*, but pays homage to Śiva in his *Ratnāvalī*.

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¹ Ed. P. Bohlen, with Latin trs., Berlin 1833; also ed., in Haeberlin's *Kāvya-saṁgraha* p. 143 f., reprinted in Jivananda's Kāvya-saṁgraha, II, p. 53 f., which also contains the Nīti and Vairāgya at pp. 125 f., 172 f. The Nīti and Vairāgya have been edited, from a number of Mss, and with extracts from commentaries, by K. T. Telang, Bomb. Skt. Ser., 1874, 1885. The three Śatakas are also printed, under the title Subhāṣitatriśatī, with comm. of Rāmacandra Budhendra, NSP, [6th revised ed., Bombay 1922 (1st ed. 1902)] A critical edition of the Śatakas is still a necessity. Eng. trs., in verse, of Nīti and Vairāgya by C. H. Tawney in *IA*, V, 1876 (reprinted, separately, Calcutta 1877); all the Śatakas trs. B. H. Wortham, Trübner: London 1886; J. M. Kennedy, London 1913; C. W. Gurner, Calcutta 1927.

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² Sometimes the grammatical poem *Bhaṭṭi-kāvya* is ascribed to him, but there is nothing more than the name Bhaṭṭi as a Prakritised form of Bhartṛ to support the attribution. The legends which make Bhartṛhari a brother of the still more mysterious Vikramāditya is useless for any historical purpose. The story has been dramatised in later times in the *Bhartṛhari-nirveda* of Harihara, ed. NSP, Bombay 1912. Cf. Gray in *JAOS*, XXV, 1904, p. 197 f.; A. V. W. Jackson in *JAOS*, XXIII, 1902, p. 313 f.

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³ See Pathak in *JBRAS*, XVIII, 1893, p. 341 f.; but this view has not found general acceptance.

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⁴ Telang, *op. cit.*, p. ix f.

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The texts of the Śatakas of Bhartṛhari, as they stand, are much more uncertain and devoid of definite structure than that of Amaru's *Śataka*; and stanzas from them occur in the works of other well-known writers,¹ or ascribed to other authors in the anthologies. The fact, however, should not be made the ground of the presumption that Bhartṛhari, like Vyāsa and Cāṇakya, is only a name under which miscellaneous compilations were passed,² or that Bhartṛhari himself incorporated stanzas from other writers to make up his own poem.³ The argument lacks neither ingenuity nor plausibility, but very few Śatakas, early or later, have escaped the misfortune of tampering and interpolation; and a critical examination of the textual question is necessary before the problem can be satisfactorily solved. There is still nothing to prevent us from accepting the tradition of Bhartṛhari's original authorship, which is almost uniform and unbroken, and which does not relegate him to the position of a mere compiler.

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¹ *E.g.* in *Abhijñāna-śakuntala*, *Mudrā-rākṣasa* and *Tantrākhyāyika*; see Peterson *Sbhv*, pp. 74-75.

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² Aufrecht *Leipzig Catalogue*, no. 417.

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³ Bohlen, *op. cit.*, Prefatio, p. viii.

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Nor is there any cogency in the suggestion that the *Śṛṅgāra-śataka* alone is genuine, made on the allged ground that it shows individuality and unity of structure as the product of a single creative mind. As the text itself is admittedly uncertain, regarding both originality and order of stanzas, such surmises, based on content and style, are always risky; but there is hardly anything to justify the position that the *Śṛṅgāra-śataka* can be sharply distinguished in this or other respects from the *Nīti-* and *Vairāgya-śatakas*. If there is any substance in the legend recorded by Yi-tsing that Bhartṛhari vacillated no less than seven times between the comparative charms of the monastery and the world, it signifies that the poet who wrote a century of passionate stanzas could very well write the other two centuries on worldly wisdom and renunciation.

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The susceptibility to contrary attractions is evident in all the three *Śatakas*. The *Nīti-śataka* should not be taken as a mere collection of moral maxims or an epitome of good sense and prudence; it shows at once a lurking attachment to the world and an open revulsion from its sordidness. The poet says, with considerable bitterness, at the outset: "Those who are capable of understanding me are full of envy; men in power are by arrogance disqualified; all others labour under stupidity; all my good sayings have, therefore, grown old within myself." In the same strain, the poet refers to the haughtiness of kings, to the power of wealth, to the humiliation of servitude, to the clash of passion and prejudice with culture and education, to the wicked and the ignorant reviling the good and the wise, and to the distressing things of life, which he calls darts rankling in his heart. Nor is the *Vairāgya-śataka* the work of an ascetic or inelastic mind. It gives expression to the passionate pain of an idealist, whose inborn belief in the goodness of the world is shattered by the sense of its hollowness and wickedness. It refers to the never-ending worries of earning and spending, of service and perpetual insults to one's self-respect, and of the wreck of human hopes in the striving for an ideal; it condemns the smug complacency of humanity in the midst of disease, decay and death, and falls back upon the cultivation of a spirit of detachment.

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The vehemence with which Bhartṛhari denounces the joys of life and attractions of love in these two poems is on a level with his attitude disclosed in his stanzas on love; for the *Śṛṅgāra-śataka* is not so much a poem on love as on the essential emptiness of love, an outburst not so much on its ecstasies and sunny memories by a self-forgetful lover, as on its darkening sorrows and wrongs by a man in bitter earnest. It indicates a frame of mind wavering between abandon and restraint; "either the fair lady or the cave of the mountains,"

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"either youth or the forest," "either an abode on the sacred banks of the Ganges or in the delightful embrace of a young woman"—sentiments like these are scattered throughout. The delights of life and love are as much captivating as they are reprehensible; the bitterness of the denunciation only indicates the measure of the terrible fascination which love and life exert on the poet; it arises not so much from any innate repugnance as from the distressing necessity of convincing himself and tearing away from them. Bhartṛhari's philosophy of love is simple: woman is both joy and sorrow, trouble and appeasement; there is continual attraction and continual repulsion; from loving too much the poet ceases to love at all and takes to asceticism. A man of artistic temperament and strong passions, the poet frankly delights in all that is delightful, but it gives him no peace nor any sure foothold anywhere. The tone is not sombre, but pungent, and even vitriolic. Bhartṛhari inevitably reminds one of Aśvaghoṣa, by the side of whose indignant outburst against woman, can be placed his biting interrogation: "Who has created woman as a contrivance for the bondage of all living creatures: woman, who is the whirlpool of all doubt, the universe of indiscipline, the abode of all daring, the receptacle of all evil, the deceitful soil of manifold distrust, the box of trickery and illusion, a poison coated with ambrosia, the hindrance to heaven and a way to the depth of hell?" If the poet sometimes attains a calmer frame of mind in his two other Śatakas on Nīti and Vairāgya, his intense conviction is hard-won, and can be best understood in the light of the powerful longings and their attendant sufferings which he describes in his Śataka on love. It is no wonder that his assumption of the yellow garb so often conflicted with his craving for worldly delights.

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Bhartṛhari, therefore, differs from Amaru both in attitude and expression. He is too earnest to believe in the exaltation of woman as such, even though he cannot withstand the fascination; he is too serious to depict in swift succession the hundreds of tender memories and pleasing pains of love, its flying thoughts and dancing feelings, its delicate lights and shades, in the same way as they reflect themselves in Amaru's little poems in their playful warmth and colour. Bhartṛhari's miniature love-stanzas have not the same picturesqueness of touch, the same delicacy and elegance of expression, but they gain in intensity, depth and range,¹ because they speak of things which lie at the core of his being; they have enough piquancy and sharpness to require any graceful trimming. If Amaru describes the emotion of love and the relation of lovers for their own sake and without any implication for connecting them with larger aspects of life, Bhartṛhari is too much occupied with life itself to forget its worries, and consider love and women² apart from it in any fanciful or ideal aspect. Amaru has perhaps more real poetry, but Bhartṛhari has more genuine feeling.³

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¹ The metres employed by Bhartṛhari in the present texts of his three pomes are diversified, but his inclination to long sonorours measures is shown by his use of Sragdharā twenty-two times. See L. H. Gray, The Metres of Bhartṛhari in *JAOS*, XX, 1899, pp. 157-59.

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² It is noteworthy that Amaru always speaks of man's fickleness, and never echoes the almost universal bitterness regarding woman's inconstancy, which characterises much of the poetical, as well as religious and didactic, literature. Bhartṛhari, in one passage, recommends boldness and even aggressiveness in dealing with women, which the commentator facetiously explains by saying that otherwise woman will dominate man!—For a general appreciation of Bhartṛhari; see C. R. Narsimha Sarma, *op. cit.*, pp. 23-56; H. Oldenberg, *Lit. d. alten indien*, p. 221 f. ; S. K. De, *op. cit.*, p. 34 f.

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³ The attitude of mind, which leaves no alternative between the world and the monastery, between love and renunciation, is not only an individual trait, but seems to have marked the outlook of a class of Sanskrit poets, who wrote stanzas, applicable by *double entente* at once to the themes of enjoyment and resignation. In general also, the Sanskrit poets have enough simplicity and integrity of feeling to make them grateful for the joys of life, but penitent when they have exceeded in enjoying them. In such an atmosphere, it is clear, the idea of the chivalrous Platonic love or the so-called intellectual love could not develop at all.

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There is a large number of erotic and reflective stanzas scattered throughout the Sanskrit anthologies, but the absence or uncertainty of chronological data makes it difficult to separate the early from the late compositions. If, however, the anthology poet Dharmakīrti, who is sometimes cited also with the epithet Bhadanta, be the Buddhist logician and philosopher, he should belong to a period between the 6th and 7th century A.D. The total number of stanzas independently assigned to him in the different anthologies¹ is about sixteen.² There is nothing of the scholar or the pedant in these elegant little poems, which are generally of an erotic character, and some of them are worthy of being placed by the side of those of Amaru and Bhartṛhari. If Dharmakīrti, in the intervals of heavier work, wrote such a collection, its loss is much to be regretted.

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¹ For a complete list, see Thomas, *Kvs*, pp. 47-50, which gives also a list of Dharmakīrti's poetical works translated into Tibetan, including two Stotras. Also see Peterson, *Sbhv*, pp. 46-48, and in *JBRAS*, XVI, pp. 172-73; Aufrecht in *Ind. Stud.*, XVI, pp. 204-7, *ZDMG*, XXVII, p. 41.

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² Of these, Ānandavardhana quotes one (iii, p. 216; *lāvanya-draviṇa*º) with the remark: *tathā cāyaṁ Dharmakīrteḥ śloka iti prasiddhiḥ, saṁbhāvyate ca tasyaiva*; and he adds another stanza (p. 217) by Dharmakīrti, which is not found in the anothologies. The first of these stanzas is also quoted and ascribed to Dharmakīrti by Kṣemendra in his *Aucitya-vicāra*.

2. The Stotra-Śatakas of Bāṇa, Mayūra and Others

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The vogue into which the Śataka style of poetry came in this period is also illustrated by the Stotras of Mayūra and Bāṇa, but their spirit, theme and method are different. The production of hymns in praise of deities obtained from the Vedic times, but the ancients possessed the secret of making their religion poetry and their poetry religion. Their descendants lost the art, but evolved a new type of Stotras or poem of praise and prayer. The Epics, as well as the Purāṇas and Tantras of uncertain date, abound in liturgical poems in which the gods of the new Hindu mythology receive adoration; while the Jainas and Buddhists do not stay behind in addressing a large number of similar religious poems to the deities and teachers of their own pantheon and hagiology. Some of these compositions are meant solely for the purpose of sects and cults; some are mere theological collections of sacred epithets or strings of a hundred or thousand sacred names; most of them have a stereotyped form and little individuality; but the higher poetry and philosophy also invaded the field. Aśvaghoṣa's early eulogy of the Buddha in *Buddha-carita* xxvii is unfortunately lost in Sanskrit, while the Stotras of his school, as well as the spurious *Gaṇḍi-stotra* of a somewhat later time, are hardly of much poetical worth. We have, however, two remarkable Stotras to Viṣṇu and Brahman, both in the Śloka metre, uttered by the gods in Kalidāsa's *Raghu°* (x. 16-32) and *Kumāra°* (iii. 4-15) respectively, although it is somewhat strange that there is no direct Stotra to his beloved deity Śiva. In this connexion, a reference may be made to a similar insertion of Stotras in the Mahākāvyas of the period, such as the Stava of Mahādeva by Arjuna in the closing canto of Bhāravi's poem, that of Kṛṣṇa by Bhīṣma in *Śiśupāla-vadha* xiv, and that of Caṇḍī by the gods in Ratnākara's *Hara-vijaya* xlvii (167 stanzas). But praise and panegyric very early became the individual theme of separate poems; and an endless number of Stotras has survived.¹ They are mostly late, and of little literary worth; for many have attempted but very few have succeeded in the exceedingly difficult task of sacred verse. Their theme and treatment do not always concern Vairāgya, but their devotional feeling is undoubted, and they are seldom merely doctrinal or abstract. Their objective, however, is not poetry, and they seldom attain its proper accent. It is no wonder, therefore, that the Sanskrit poeticians and anthologists do not give much prominence to the Stotra works, nor consider them worthy of a separate treatment.

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¹ For religious hymnology, in general, a subject which has not yet been adequately studied, see S. P. Bhattacharyya, The Stotra-Literature of Old India in *IHQ*, I, 1925, pp. 340-60, for an eloquent, appreciation.

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The early efforts of Mayūra and Bāṇabhaṭṭa are not very impressive for their purely poetic merit, but they illustrate the early application of the elegant, but distinctly laboured, manner of the Kāvya and its rhetorical contrivances to this kind of literature. Mayūra is associated,¹ chiefly by late Jaina legends, assertions of late commentators and recorded traditions of anthologists, with Bāṇabhaṭṭa as a literary rival in the court of Harṣa and as related by marriage either as brother-in-law or father-in-law.² The legends also speak of Mayūra's affliction with leprosy by the angry curse of Bāṇa's wife, Mayūra's alleged sister or daughter, whose intimate personal beauty he is said to have described in an indiscreet poem. This work is supposed to be identical with the highly erotic, but rather conventional, poem of eight fragmentary stanzas, which goes by the name *Mayūrāṣṭaka*,³ and which describes a fair lady returning from a secret visit to her lover. Three of its stanzas are in Sragdharā (the metre of *Sūryaśataka*) and the rest in Śārdūlavikrīḍita; it refers, with more wit than taste, to the "tiger-sport" of the lady with the "demon of a lover," and to the beauty of her limbs which makes even an old man amorously inclined.⁴ If the poem is genuine, it is possible that such descriptions in the poem itself started the legend; but the legend also adds that a miraculous recovery from the unhappy disease was effected, through the grace of the sun-god, by Mayūra's composing his well-known poem, the *Sūrya-* *śataka*,¹ in praise of the deity. But it must be said that the *Śataka* gives the impression of being actuated not so much by piety as by the spirit of literary display. The theme of the work, which retains in its present form exactly one hundred stanzas,² consists of an extravagant description and praise of the sun-god and his appurtenances, namely, his rays, the horses that draw his chariot, his charioteer Aruṇa, the chariot itself and the solar disc. The sixth stanza of the poem refers to the sun’s power of healing diseases, which apparently set the legend rolling; but the belief that the sun can inflict and cure leprosy is old, being preserved in the Iranian story of Sām, the prototype of the Purāṇic legend of Sāmba; it may not have anything to do with the presumption that the cult of the sun was popular in the days of Harṣa, even if Harṣa’s father is described in the *Harṣa-carita* as a devotee of the sun. With all its devotional attitude, the poem is written in the elaborate Sragdharā metre; and its diction, with its obvious partiality for compound words, difficult construction, constant alliteration, jingling of syllables and other rhetorical devices,³ is equally elaborate. The quality of graceful and dignified expression and the flowing gorgeousness of the metre may be admitted; in fact, the majesty which this compactly loaded metre can put on has seldom been better shown; but the highly stilted and recondite tendencies of the work have little touch of spontaneous inspiration about them. Whatever power there is of visual presentation, it is often neutralised by the deliberate selection and practice of laboured tricks of rhetoric. The work is naturally favoured by the rhetoricians, grammarians and lexicographers, and frequently commented upon,¹ but to class it with the poems of Kālidāsa and Bhavabhūti shows the lack of ability to distinguish between real poetry and its make-believe.²

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¹ All that is known of Mayūra and his genuine and ascribed works will be found in G. P. Quackenbos, *The Sanskrit Poems of Mayūra*, New York 1917 (Columbia Univ. Indo-Iranian series); it gives the works in Roman transliteration, with Eng. trs. and notes, and also contains the *Caṇḍī-śataka* of Bāṇa with trs. and notes.

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² In the enumeration of the friends of his youth, who are said to have been of the same age (*vayasā samānāḥ*), Bāṇa refers in his *Harṣa-carita* (ed. A. A. Führer, Bombay 1909, p. 67; ed. Parab, NSP, Bombay 1892, p. 47, 4th ed., 1914, p. 42) to a certain Jāṅgulika or snake-doctor, appropriately named Mayūraka, who may or may not be our poet; but the earliest mention of the poet Mayūra, along with Bāṇa, in the court of Harṣa occurs in the *Navasāhasāṅka-carita* (ii. 18) of Padmagupta (about 1005 A. D.). The later eulogistic stanza of Rājaśekhara in *Sml.* (iv. 68), however, punningly alludes to the art of the snake-doctor. The earliest anonymous quotation of two stanzas (Nos. 9, 23) from the *Sūrya-śataka* of Mayūra occurs in Ānandavardhana's *Dhvanyāloka* (2nd half of the 9th century), ii, p. 92 and 99-100. There is another much inferior tradition which connects him, along with many other Sanskrit poets, with king Bhojo of Dhārā.

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³ Quackenbos, *op. cit.*, pp. 72-79, text and trs.; also in *JAOS*, XXXI, 1911, pp. 343-54.

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⁴ *Kenaiṣā rati-rākṣasena ramitā śārdūla-vikrīḍitā*, st. 3; and *dṛṣṭvā rūpam idaṁ priyāṅga-gahanam vṛddho'pi kāmāyate*, st. 5.

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¹ Ed. G. P. Quackenbos, as above. Also ed. in Haeberlin, *op. cit.*, p. 197 f., reproduced in Jīvānanda, *op. cit.*, II, pp. 222 f.; ed. Durgāprasād and K. P. Parab with comm. of Tribhuvanapāla, NSP, Bombay 1889, 1927; ed. with comm. of Yajñeśvara, in Pothi form, Baroda Saṁvat 1928 (=1872 A.D.). The Ceylonese paraphrase (Sanna) by Vilgammūla Mahāthere, with text, ed. Don A. de Silva Devarakkhita Baṭuvantuḍave, Colombo 1883 (see *JRAS*, XXVI, 1894, p. 555 and XXVIII, 1896, pp. 215-16).

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² With an apparently spurious stanza at the end, not noticed by the commentator, in NSP ed., giving the name of the author and the Phala-śruti. The order of the stanzas, however, is not the same in all editions and manuscripts; but this is of little consequence in a loosely constructed poem of this kind.

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³ It is remarkable that puns are *not* frequent; and the poem has some clever, but very elaborate, similes and metaphors, e.g., that of the thirsty traveller (st. 14), of antidote against poison (st. 31), of the day-tree (st. 34), of the dramatic technique (st. 50); there is a play on the numerals from one to ten (st. 13; cf. *Buddha-carita* ii. 41); harsh-sounding series of syllables often occur (st. 6, 98 etc.); while st. 71 is cited by Mammaṭa as an instance of a composition, where facts are distorted in order to effect an alliteration. The Akṣara-ḍambara, which Bāṇa finds in the diction of the Gauḍas, is abundant here, as well as in his own *Caṇḍī-śataka*; and it is no wonder that one of the commentators, Madhusūdana (about 1654 A.D.), gives to both Mayūra and Bāṇa the designation of eastern poets (Paurastya).

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¹ The number of commentaries listed by Aufrecht is 25; see Quackenbos, *op. cit.*, p. 103.

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² About 20 stanzas in various metres, not traceable in this work, are assigned to Mayūra in the anthologies; some of them are clever and less artificial, but are not of much poetical value. For these see Quackenbos, pp. 229-42. Some of these verses are ascribed to other poets as well; see Thomas, *Kvs*, p. 67f.

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The *Caṇḍī-śataka*³ of Bāṇa is of no higher poetical merit; it is cited even less by rhetoricians⁴ and anthologists, and commentaries on it are much fewer.⁵ Written and composed in the same sonorous Sragdharā metre⁶ (102 stanzas) and in the same elaborate rhetorical diction, the poem shows noteworthy similarity to Mayūra's *Śataka*, and lends plusibility to the tradition that it was composed in admiring rivalry. The myth of Caṇḍī's slaying of the buffalo-demon is old, being mentioned in the *Mahābhārata* (ix. 44-46) and amplified in the *Purāṇas*; but Bāṇa makes use of it, not for embellishing the story, but for a high-flown panegyric of Caṇḍī, including a glorification of the power of Caṇḍī's left foot which killed the demon by its marvellous kick! Bāṇa does not adopt Mayūra's method of systematic description of the various objects connected with Caṇḍī, but seeks diversion by introducing, in as many as forty-eight stanzas, speeches in the first person (without dialogue) by Caṇḍī, Mahiṣa, Caṇḍī's handmaids Jayā and Vijayā, Śiva, Kārttikeya, the gods and demons—and even by the foot and toe-nails of Caṇḍī! Bāṇa has none of Mayūra's elaborate similes, but puns are of frequent occurrence and are carried to the extent of involving interpretation of entire individual stanzas in two ways. There is an equally marked tendency towards involved and recondite constructions, but the stylistic devices and love of conceits are perhaps more numerous and prominent. The work has all the reprehensible features of the verbal bombast with which Bāṇa himself characterises the style of the Gauḍas. Even the long-drawn-out and never sluggish melody of its voluminous metre does not fully redeem its artificialities of idea and expression, while the magnificent picturesqueness, which characterises Bāṇa's prose works, is not much in evidence here. To a greater extent than Mayūra's Śataka, it is a poetical curiosity rather than a real poem; but it is an interesting indication of the decline of poetic taste and growing artificiality of poetic form, which now begin to mark the growth of the Kāvya.

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³ Ed. in *Kāvyamālā*, Gucchaka iv, with a Sanskrit comm.: ed. G. P. Quackenbos, as above, pp. 243-357. There is nothing improbable in Bāṇa's authorship of the work. Arjunavarmadeva in the 12th century (on Amaru, st. 1) expressly ascribes this work to Bāṇa and quotes a stanza from it. There is a picturesque description of a temple of Caṇḍikā in Bāṇa's *Kādambarī*.

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⁴ The earliest quotation is by Bhoja, who cites st. 40 and 66.

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⁵ Only two or three commentaries are, so far, known.

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⁶ With the exception of six stanzas in Śārdūlavikrīḍita (nos. 25, 32, 49, 55, 56, 72), which may or may not be original, for the variation has no special motive.

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One of Rājaśekhara's eulogistic stanzas quoted in the *Sūktimuktāvalī* (iv. 70) connects Bāṇa and Mayūra with Mataṅga (*v. l.* Caṇḍāla)¹ Divākara as their literary rival in the court of king Harṣa. Nothing remains of his work except four stanzas quoted in the *Subhāṣitāvalī*, of which one (no. 2546), describing the seagirdled earth successively as the grandmother, mother, spouse and daughter-in-law, apparently of king Harṣa, has been censured for inelegance by Abhinavagupta. It has been suggested² that the poet should be identified with Mānatunga, the well known Jaina Ācārya and author of two Stotras (namely, the *Bhaktāmara*¹ in Sanskrit and *Bhayahara*² in Prakrit), on the ground that some Jaina tales of miracles³ connect him with Bāṇa and Mayūra. But the evidence is undoubtedly weak,⁴ and the presumption that the three Stotras of Bāṇa, Mayūra and this poet were meant respectively to celebrate sun-worship, Śāktism and Jainism is more schematic than convincing. The date of Mānatunga is uncertain; the Jaina monastic records place him as early as the 3rd century A.D., but other traditions bring him down to periods between the 5th and the 9th century A.D. There is little basis of comparison between Mānatunga's Stotra and the Śatakas of Bāṇa and Mayūra. It consists of 44 or 48 stanzas, in the lighter and shorter Vasantatilaka metre, in praise of the Jina Ṛṣabha as the incomparable and almost deified saint; but it is not set forth in the Āśir form of Bāṇa and Mayūra's Śatakas, being directly addressed to the saint. It is in the ornate manner, but it is much less elaborate, and the rhetorical devices, especially punning, are not prominent. Its devotional feeling is unmistakable, but there is little that is distinctive in its form and content.⁵

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¹ The GOS edition (Baroda 1938, p. 45) reads Caṇḍāla, without any variant, but with the note that the reading Mātaṅga is found in *ŚP.* Apparently the latter reading is sporadic.

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² F. Hall, introd. to *Vāsavadattā*, Calcutta 1859, p. 21, and Maxmüller, *India*, p. 330, note 5.

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¹ Ed. Kāvyamālā, Gucchaka vii, pp. 1-10; also ed. and trs. H. Jacobi in *Ind. Stud.*, XIV, p. 359f. The title is suggested by the opening words of the poem.

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² Addressed to Jina Pārśvanātha, but the work is not yet printed. In 1309 A. D. Jinaprabha Sūri wrote a commentary on it (Peterson, *Report 1882-83*, p. 52).

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³ The legend of the Jina's delivering Mānatunga from his self-imposed fetters, on the parallel of Caṇḍīs healing the self-amputated limbs of Bāṇa, is probably suggested by the general reference in the poem itself to the Jina's power, apparently in a metaphorical sense of releasing the devotee from fetters.

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⁴ See Quackenbos, *op. cit.*, p. 10f.

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⁵ The later Jaina Stotras, in spite of their devotional importance, are not of much literary value; see Winternitz, *HIL*, II, p. 551f. Even the *Kalyāṇa-mandira* Stotra (ed. Kāvyamālā and *Ind. Stud.*, *loc. cit.*) of Siddhasena Divākara is a deliberate and much more laboured imitation of the *Bhaktāmara* in the same metre and same number (44) of stanzas.

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To the king-poet Harṣavardhana himself are ascribed, besides the three well known plays, some Buddhist Stotras of doubtful poetical value, if not of doubtful authorship. Of these, the *Suprabha* or *Suprabhāta Stotra*,¹ recovered in Sanskrit, is a morning hymn of twenty-four stanzas addressed to the Buddha, in the Malini metre. About a dozen occasional stanzas, chiefly of an erotic character, but of a finer quality than the Stotra, are assigned to Harṣa in the anthologies, in addition to a large number which can be traced mainly in the *Ratnāvalī* and the *Nāgānanda*.²

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¹ Ascribed wrongly to king Harṣadeva of Kashmir in *Bstan-hgyur* and in Minayeff's manuscripts. It is given in extenso by Thomas in *JRAS*, 1903, pp. 703-22 and reproduced in App. B. to P. V. Kane's ed. of *Harṣa-carita*, Bombay 1918 See *Sbhv*, Introd. under *Suprabhāta*.

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² The anthological and inscriptional verses ascribed to Harṣa are collected together in introd. to *Priyadarśikā*, ed. Nariman, Jackson and Ogden, New York 1923, p. xlivf, and Thomas, *Kvs*. See M. L. Ettinghausen, *Harṣavardhana*, Louvain 1906, pp. 161-79.

3. The Mahākāvya from Bhāravi to Māgha

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One of the most remarkable offshoots of the literature of this period is represented by a group of Kālidāsa's direct and impressive poetical descendants, who made it their business to keep up the tradition of the sustained and elevated poetical composition, known in Sanskrit as the Mahākāvya, but who developed and established it in such a way as to stereotype it for all time to come. The impetus, no doubt, came from Kālidāsa's two so-called Mahākāvyas, but the form and content of the species were worked out in a different spirit. It would be unhistorical in this connexion to consider the definitions of the Mahākāvya given by the rhetoricians,³ for none of them is earlier than Kālidāsa, and the question whether Kālidāsa conformed to them does not arise. Nor should the group of early poets, with whom we are occupied here, be supposed to have followed them. On the contrary, the norm, which even the two earliest rhetoricians, Bhāmaha (i. 19-23) and Daṇḍin (i. 14-19), lay down appears to have been deduced from the works of these poets themselves, especially from those of Bhāravi, the main features of which are generalised into rules of universal application. As such, the definitions are, no doubt, empirical, but they deal with accidents rather than with essentials, and do not throw much light upon the historical or poetic character of these compositions.

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³ J. Nobel, *The Foundations of Indian Poetry*, Calcutta 1925, p. 140f. The Mahākāvya or 'Great Poem' is a poetical narrative of heroic characters and exploits, but it is not a work of the type of the Great Epics, the *Mahābhārata* or the *Rāmāyaṇa*, which correspond to our sense of a heroic poem, but which are classified and distinguished as Itihāsas. The eminence denoted by the prefix 'great' does not refer to the more primitive epic or heroic spirit nor to directness and simplicity, but rather to the bulk, sustained workmanship and general literary competence of these more sophisticated and deliberate productions. If an analogy is permissible, the Mahākāvyas stand in the same relation to the Great Epics as the work of Milton does to that of Homer.

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Perhaps for this reason, Vāmana (i. 3. 22) brushes aside the definitions as of no special interest; but it is important to note that the rather extensive analysis of Rudraṭa (xvi. 7-19), more than that of earlier rhetoricians, emphasises at least one interesting characteristic of the Mahākāvya, as we know them, when it prescribes the rules for the development of the theme. Like his predecessors, he speaks indeed of such formal requirements as the commencement of the poem with a prayer, blessing or indication of content, the pursuit of the fourfold ends of life (conduct, worldly success, love and emancipation) the noble descent of the hero, the occurrence of sentiments and ornaments, the division into cantos, the change of metre at the end of each canto, and so forth; but he also gives a list of diverse topics which may be introduced into the main narrative. These include not only subjects like political consultation, sending of messengers and spies, encampment, campaign and triumph of the hero, but also descriptions of towns, citizens, oceans, mountains, rivers, seasons, sunset, moonrise, dawn, sport in park or in water, drinking bouts and amorous dalliance. All this is, of course, prescribed as it is found conspicuously in Bhāravi and Māgha; but Rudraṭa adds that in due time the poet may resume the thread of the main narrative, implying thereby that these descriptions, no matter what their relevancy is, should be inserted as a matter of conventional amplification and embellishment, and may even hold up and interrupt the story itself for a considerable length. This seldom happens in Kalidasa, in whom the narrative never loses its interest in subsidiary matters; but in Bhāravi and Māgha these banal topics, loosely connected with the main theme, spread over at least five (iv, v, viii-x) and six (vi-xi) entire cantos respectively, until the particular poet has leisure to return to his narrative. While Bhaṭṭi is sparing in these digressions, which are found mostly scattered in cantos ii, x and xi, Kumāradāsa devotes considerable space to them (cantos i, iii, viii, ix and xii). Although there is, in these passages, evidence of fluent, and often fine, descriptive power, the inventiveness is neither free nor fertile, but moves in the conventional groove of prescribed subjects and ideas, and the over-loading of the parts necessarily leads to the weakening of the central argument.

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The motive for such adventitious matter is fairly obvious. It is meant to afford the poet unchartered freedom to indulge in his luxuriant descriptive talent and show off his skill and learning. While it tends to make the content of the poem rich and diversified, one inevitable result of this practice is that the story is thereby pushed into the background, and the poetical embellishments, instead of being incidental and accessory, become the main point of the Mahakavya. The narrative ceases to be interesting compared to the descriptive, argumentative or erotic divagations of unconscionable length; there is abundance, but no sense of proportion. The theme, therefore, is often too slender and insignificant; whatever may be there of it is swamped by a huge mass of digressive matter, on which the poet chiefly concentrates; and the whole poem becomes, not an organic whole, but a mosaic of poetic fragments, tastelessly cemented together.

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It must be admitted that there is no lack of interesting matter in these Mahākāvyas, but the matter is deliberately made less interesting than the manner. The elegant, pseudo-heroic or succulent passages are generally out of place, but they are an admirable outlet for the fantastic fancy and love of rhetoric and declamation which characterise these poets. At the time we have reached, the stream of original thought and feeling, after attaining its high-water mark in Kalidasa, was decidedly slackening. The successors of Kalidasa pretend to hand down the tradition of their predecessor's great achievement, but what they lack in poetic inspiration, they make up by rhetoric in its full and varied sense. The whole literature is indeed so saturated with rhetoric that everything, more or less, takes a rhetorical turn. It seeks to produce, most often successfully, fine effects, not by power of matter, but by power of form, not by the glow of inspiration, but by the exuberance of craftsmanship; and one may truly say that it is the age of cultivated form. If Kalidasa left Sanskrit poetry a finished body, the subsequent ages did no more than weave its successive robes of adornment.

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There is, therefore, an abundance of technical skill—and technical skill of no despicable kind—in the Mahakāvyas of this period, but there is a corresponding deficiency of those subtle and indefinable poetic powers, which make a composition vital in its appeal. The rhetoric, no doubt, serves its own purpose in these poems, and no one can deny its vigour and variety; but it never goes very far, and often overreaches itself by its cleverness and excess. It breeds in the poets an inordinate love for itself, which seduces them to a prolixity, disproportionate to their theme, and to an extravagance of diction and imagery, unsuitable to their thought and emotion. This want of balance between matter and manner, which is rare in Kalidasa and which a true poetic instinct always avoids, is very often prominent in these lesser poets; and their popularity makes the tradition long and deeply rooted in Sanskrit poetical literature. It degenerates into a deliberate selection of certain methods and means wholly to achieve style, and loses all touch of spontaneity and naturalness. To secure strength, needless weight is superadded, and elasticity is lost in harmony too mechanically studied. The poets are never slipshod, never frivolous; they are indeed far too serious, far too sober either to soar high or dive deep. Theirs is an equable merit, producing a dainty and even effect, rather than a throbbing response to the contagious rapture of poetic thought and feeling. As they never sin against art, they seldom reach the heaven of poetry.

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