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A History of Sanskrit Literature: Classical Period, Vol. I c7: Chapter V. Successors of Kālidāsa in Prose and Drama

A History of Sanskrit Literature: Classical Period, Vol. I c7

Language
English

Contents

Chapter V. Successors of Kālidāsa in Prose and Drama

1. The Prose Kāvyas of Daṇḍin, Subandhu and Bāṇa

a. General Remarks

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The peculiar type of prose narrative, which the Sanskrit theory includes under the category of Kathā and Ākhyāyikā, but which, on a broader interpretation, has been styled Prose Romance or Kuntsroman, first makes its appearance, in this period, in a fully developed form in the works of Daṇḍin, Subandhu and Bāṇa. But the origin of this species of literature is shrouded in greater obscurity than that of the Kāvya itself, of which it is presumed to be a sub-division. We know at least of Aśvaghoṣa as a predecessor who heralded the poetic maturity of Kālidāsa, but of the forerunners of Daṇḍin, Subandhu and Bāṇa we have little information. The antiquity of this literature is undoubted, but no previous works, which might have explained the finished results diversely attained by these authors, have come down to us. We have seen that the Ākhyāyikā is specifically mentioned by Kātyāyana in his Varttika; and Patañjali, commenting on it, gives the names of three Ākhyāyikās known to him, namely, Vāsavadattā, Sumanottarā and Bhaimarathī; but we know nothing about the form and content of these early works. The very title of the *Bṛhatkathā* and the designation Kathā applied to the individual tales of the *Pañcatantra*, one of whose versions is also called *Tantrākhyāyikā*, indicate an early familiarity with the words Kathā and Ākhyāyikā, but the terms are apparently used to signify a tale in general, without any specific technical connotation.¹ We know nothing, again, of the *Cārumatī* of Vararuci, from which a stanza is quoted in Bhoja's *Śr̥ṅgāra-prakāśa*, nor of the *Śūdraka-kathā* (if it is a Kathā) of Kālidāsa's predecessor Somila (and Rāmila), nor of the *Taraṅgavatī* of Śrīpalitta,¹ who is mentioned and praised in Dhanapāla's *Tilakamañjarī* and Abhinanda's *Rāma-carita* as a contemporary of Hāla-Śātavāhana. Bāṇa himself alludes to the two classes of prose composition, called respectively the Kathā and the Ākhyāyikā, clearly intimating that his *Harṣa-carita* is intended to be an Ākhyāyikā and his *Kādambarī* a Kathā. He also offers a tribute of praise to writers of the Ākhyāyikā who preceded him, and refers, as Subandhu also does,² to its division into chapters called Ucchvāsas and to the occurrence of Vaktra metres as two of its distinguishing characteristics. Bāṇa even mentions Bhaṭṭāra Haricandra, to us only a name, as the author of a prose composition of high merit; to this testimony the Prakrit poet Vākpati, in the 9th century, subscribes by mentioning Haricandra along with Kālidāsa, Subandhu and Bāṇa.

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¹ The Kathā and the Ākhyāyikā are mentioned in *Mahābhārata* ii. 11.38 (Bomb.Ed.), but Winternitz has shown (*JRAS*, 1903, pp. 571-72) that the stanza is interpolated.—The Sanskrit Ākhyāyikā, as we know it, has no similarity to Oldenberg's hypothetical Vedic Ākhyāna; for in the Ākhyāyikā the prose is essential and the verse negligible. See Keith in *JRAS* 1911, p. 979 for full discussion and references.

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¹ This is obviously the Dharaṇa-kathā or Jaina religious story, called *Taraṅgavatī*, of Śrī-pādalipta or Siri-pālitta, who is already mentioned as Taraṅgavatīkāra in the *Aṇuogadāra*, and therefore must have flourished before the 5th century A.D. The scene of the story is laid at Śrāvastī in the time of Udayana; but the work is lost. Its romantic love-story, however, is preserved in the *Taraṅgalolā*, composed in Prakrit verse in 1643 A.D. According to E. Leumann, who has translated the *Taraṅgalolā* (München 1921), Śrī-pādalipta lived as early as the 2nd or 3rd century A.D. There is a tradition that he lived in the time of Sālivāhana. A MS of the Prakrit work is noticed in the *Descriptive Cat. of MSS in the Jaina Bhandar at Pattan* by L. B. Gandhi (GOS, Baroda 1937), introd., p. 58.

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² Ed. F. Hall, p. 184.

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It seems clear, therefore, that Bāṇa is no innovator, nor is Haricandra the creator of the Prose Kāvya, which must have gradually evolved, with the narrative material of the folk-tale, under the obvious influence of the poetic Kāvya during a considerable period of time. But an effort³ has been made to prove, by adducing parallels of incident, motif and literary device, that the Sanskrit romance was directly derived from the Greek. Even admitting some of the parallels, the presumption is not excluded that they might have developed independently, while the acutal divergence between the two types, in form and spirit, is so great as to render any theory of borrowing no more than a groundless conjecture. The Sanskrit romance, deriving its inspiration directly from the Kāvya, to which it is approximated both by theory and practice, is hardly an exotic; it is differentiated from the Greek romance by its comparative lack of interest in the narrative, which is a marked quality of the Greek romance, as well as by its ornate elaboration of form and exprssion,¹ which is absent in the naivete and simplicity of the Greek stories. It is true that the fact of difference need not exclude the possibility of borrowing; but, as in the case of the drama, no substantial fact has yet been adduced, which would demonstrate the positive fact of borrowing by Sanskrit.

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³ Weber in *SBAW*, XXXVII, p. 917 and *Ind. Stud.* XVIII, p. 456 f.; Peterson introd. to *Kādambarī*, 2nd ed., Bombay 1889, pp. 101-04. But Lacôte comes to the opposite conclusion of the borrowing by the Greek romance from the Sanskrit! See discussion of the question by L. H. Gray, introd. to *Vāsavadattā* (cited below), p. 35 f.; Keith in *JRAS*, 1914, p. 1103; 1915, p. 784 f.; *HSL*, p. 365 f.; and Winternitz, *GIL*, III, p. 371 f.

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¹ The Greek romance has, not doubt, a few specific instance of rhetorical ornaments, such as homoiteleuta, parisosis, alliteration and strained compounds, but they are not comparable to those in the Sanskrit romance, which essentially depends on them. There is hardly anything in Greek corresponding to the picaresque type of story which we find in Daṇḍin.

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So far as the works of the rhetoricians are concerned, the earliest forms of the Kathā and the Ākhyāyikā are those noticed by Bhāmaha and Daṇḍin.² In the Ākhyāyikā, according to Bhāmaha, the subject-matter gives facts of actual experince, the narrator being the hero himself; the story is told in pleasing prose, divided into chapters called Ucchvāsas and containing metrical pieces in Vaktra and Aparavaktra metre, indicative of future happening of incidents; scope may be allowed to poetic invention, and the theme may embrace subjects like the abduction of a maiden (Kanyā-haraṇa), fighting, separation and final triumph of the hero; and it should be composed in Sanskrit. In the Kathā, on the other hand, the subject-matter is generally an invented story, the narrator being some one other than the hero; there is no division into Ucchvāsas, no Vaktra or Aparavaktra verses; and it may be composed either in Sanskrit or in Apabhraṃśa. It will be seen at once that the prototypes of this analysis are, strictly, not the two prose narratives of Bāṇa, nor those of Daṇḍin and Subandhu, but some other works which have not come down to us. It is worth noting, however, that the older and more rigid distinctions, embodied by Bhāmaha, were perhaps being obliterated by the innovations of bolder poets; and we find a spirit of destructive criticism in the *Kāvyādarśa* of Daṇḍin, who considers these refinements not as essential, but as more or less formal requirements. Accordingly, Daṇḍin does not insist upon the person of the narrator, nor the kind of metre, nor the heading of the chapter, nor the limitations of the linguistic form as fundamental marks of difference. This is apparently in view of current poetical usage, in which both the types were perhaps converging under the same class of prose narrative, with only a superficial difference in nomenclature. It must have been a period of uncertain transition, and Daṇḍin's negative criticism (as also Vāmana's brushing aside of the whole controversy) implies that no fixed rules had yet been evolved to regulate the fluctuating theory or practice relating to them.

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² See, on this question, S. K. De, The Ākhyāyikā and Kathā in Classical Sanskrit in *BSOS*, III, 1925, p. 507-17; also J. Nobel, *op. cit.*, p. 156 f.

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It is clear that the uncertain ideas of early theorists, as well as the extremely small number of specimens that have survived, does not give us much guidance in definitely fixing the nomenclature and original character of the Sanskrit Prose Kāvya. Nevertheless, the whole controversy shows that the two kinds of prose narrative were differentiated at least in one important characteristic. Apart from merely formal requirements, the Ākhyāyikā was conceived, more or less, as a serious composition dealing generally with facts of experience and having an autobiographical, traditional or semi-historical interest; while the Kathā was essentially a fictitious narrative, which may sometimes (as Daṇḍin contends) be recounted in the first person, but whose chief interest resides in its invention.¹ These older types appear to have been modified in course of time; and the modification was chiefly on the lines of the model popularised by Bāṇa in his two prose Kavyas. Accordingly we find Rudraṭa doing nothing more than generalising the chief features of Bāṇa's works into rules of universal application. In the Ākhyāyikā, therefore, Rudraṭa authorises the formula that the narrator need not be the hero himself, that the Ucchvāsas (except the first) should open with two stanzas, preferably in the Āryā metre, indicating the tenor of the chapter in question, and that there should be a metrical introduction of a literary character. All these injunctions are in conformity with what we actually find in Bāṇa's *Harṣa-carita*. The Kathā was less touched by change in form and substance, but the erotic character of the story, consisting of the winning of a maiden (Kanyā-lābha), and not abduction (Kanyā-haraṇa) of the earlier theorists, was expressly recognised; while, in accordance with the prevalent model of the *Kādambarī*, a metrical introduction, containing a statement of the author's family and motives of authorship, is also required. This practically stereotypes the two kinds in Sanskrit literature. It is noteworthy, however, that later rhetoricians do not expressly speak of the essential distinction based upon tradition and fancy, although they emphasise the softer character of the Kathā by insisting that its main issue is Kanyā-lābha, which would give free scope to the delineation of the erotic sentiment.

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¹ The old lexicon of Amara also accepts (i. 5. 5-6) this distinction when it says: *ākhyāyikopalabdhārthā, and prabandhakalpanā kathā*.

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It is obvious that the prescriptions of the theorists are interesting historical indications of later developments, but they do not throw much light upon the origin and early history of the Sanskrit Prose Kavya. In the absence of older material, the problem is difficult and does not admit of a precise determination. There can hardly be any affinity with the beast-fable of the Pañcatantra type, which is clearly distinguishable in form, content and spirit; but it is perhaps not unreasonable to assume that there was an early connexion with the popular tale of heroes and heroines, including the fairy tale of magic and marvel. This appears to be indicated by the very designation of the *Bṛhatkathā* as a Kathā and the express mention of this work as a Kathā by Daṇḍin; and the indication is supported by the suggestion that this early collection was drawn upon by Daṇḍin, Subandhu and Bāṇa. If this is granted, a distinction should, at the same time, be made; for the *Bṛhatkathā*, in conception and expression, was apparently a composition of a different type. The available evidence makes it more than probable that the popular tale never attained any of the refinement and elaboration which we find in the prose romance from its beginning,—in a less degree in Daṇḍin and in more extravagant manner in Subandhu and Bāṇa. From this point of view, the prose romance cannot be directly traced back to the popular tale represented by Guṇāḍhya's work; its immediate ancestor is the ornate Kāvya itself, whose graces were transferred from verse to prose for the purpose of rehandling and elaborating the popular tale. It is not known whether the new form was applied first to the historical story and then employed to embellish the folk-tale, as the basis of the distinction between the Ākhyāyikā and the Kathā seems to imply; but (it is evident that the prose romance was evolved out of the artistic Kāvya and influenced by it throughout its history. The theorists, unequivocally and from the beginning, include the prose romance in the category of the Kāvya and regard it as a kind of transformed Kāvya in almost every respect, while the popular tale and the beast-fable are not even tardily recognised and given that status.)

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It seems probable, therefore, that the prose romance had a twofold origin. It draws freely upon the narrative material of the folk-tale, rehandles some of its natural and supernatural incidents and motifs, adopts its peculiar emboxing arrangement of tales and its contrivance of *deux ex machina*, and, in fact, utilises all that is the common stock-in-trade of the Indian story-teller. But its form and method of story-telling are different, and are derived essentially from the Kāvya. Obviously written for a cultured audience, the prose romance has not only the same elevated and heavily ornamented diction, but it has also the same enormous development of the art of description. In fact, the existing specimens combine a legendary content with the form and spirit of a literary *tour de force*. The use of unwieldy compounds, incessant and elaborate puns, alliterations and assonances, recondite allusions and other literary devices, favourite to the Kāvya, receive greater freedom in prose ; but stress is also laid on a minute description of nature and on an appreciation of mental, moral and physical qualities of men and women. From the Kāvya also comes its love-motif, as well as its inclination towards erotic digressions. Not only is the swift and simple narrative of the tale clothed lavishly with all the resources of learning and fancy, but we find (except in Daṇḍin's *Daśakumāra-carita*) that the least part of the romance is the narrative, and nothing is treated as really important but the description and embellishment. From this point of view, it would be better to call these works Prose Kāvyas or poetical compositions in prose, than use the alien nomenclature Prose Romances, which has a connotation not wholly applicable.

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The evolution of the peculiar type of the Prose Kāvya from the Metrical Kāvya, with the intermediary of the folk-tale, need not have been a difficult process in view of the fact that the term Kāvya includes any imaginative work of a literary character and refuses to make verse an essential. The medium is immaterial ; the poetical manner of expression becomes important both in prose and verse. If this is a far-off anticipation of Wordsworth's famous dictum that there is no essential distinction between verse and prose, the direction is not towards simplicity but towards elaborateness. In the absence of early specimens of imaginative Sanskrit prose, it is not possible to decide whether the very example of the Prose Kāvya is responsible for this attitude, or is itself the result of the attitude ; but the approximation of the Prose Kāvya to the Metrical Kāvya appears to have been facilitated by the obliteration of any vital distinction between literary compositions in verse and in prose. But for the peculiar type of expository or argumentative prose found in technical works and commentaries, verse remains throughout the history of Sanskrit literature the normal medium of expression, while prose retains its conscious character as something which has to compete with verse and share its rhythm and refinement. At no period prose takes a prominence and claims a larger place; it is entirely subordinated to poetry and its art. The simple, clear and yet elegant prose of the *Pañcatantra* is considered too jejune, and never receives its proper development; for poetry appears to have invaded very early, as the inscriptional records show, the domain of descriptive, romantic and narrative prose. An average prose-of-all-work never emerges, and even in technical treatises pedestrian verse takes the place of prose.

b. Daṇḍin

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The *Daśakumāra-carita*¹ of Daṇḍin illustrates some of the peculiarities of the Sanskrit Prose Kavya mentioned above, but it does not conform strictly to all the requirements of the theorists. This disregard of convention in practice may, with plausibility, be urged as an argument in support of the identity of our Daṇḍin with Daṇḍin, author of *Kāvyādarśa*, who, as we have seen above, also advocates in theory a levelling of distinctions. But from the rhetorician’s negative account no conclusive inference is possible, and the romancer may be creating a new genre without consciously concerning himself with the views of the theorists. The problem of identity cannot be solved on this slender basis alone; and there is, so far, no unanimity nor impregnable evidence on the question. Some critics are satisfied with the traditional ascription of both the works to one Daṇḍin,¹ and industriously search for points to support it. However good the position is, errors in traditional ascription are not rare and need not be final. On the other hand, the name Daṇḍin itself, employed to designate a religious mendicant of a certain order, may be taken as a title capable of being applied to more than one person, and therefore does not exclude the possibility of more than one Daṇḍin. A very strong ground for denying identity of authorship is also made out² by not a negligible amount of instances in which Daṇḍin the prose-poet offends against the prescriptions of Daṇḍin the rhetorician. It is a poor defence to say that a man need not practise what he teaches; for the question is more vital than mere mechanical adherence to rules, but touches upon niceties of diction and taste and general outlook. The presumption that the *Daśakumāra* belongs to the juvenilia of Daṇḍin and the *Kāvyādarśa* is the product of more mature judgment is ingenious, but there is nothing immature in either work. The general exaltation of the Vaidarbha Mārga in the *Kāvyādarśa* and its supposed illustration in the *Daśakumāra* supply at best a vague argument, which need not be considered seriously. That both the authors were Southerners is suggested, but not proved; for while the indications in the *Kāvyādarśa* are inconclusive, there is nothing to show that, apart from conventional geography,³ the author of the romance knows familiarly the eighteen different countries mentioned in the course of the narrative. The geographical items of the *Daśakumāra* only reveal a state of things which existed probably in a period anterior to the date of Harṣavardhana's empire,¹ and suggest for the work a date much earlier than what is possible to assign to the *Kāvyādarśa*. It is true that the time of both the works is unknown; but while the date of the *Kāvyādarśa* is approximated to the begining of the 8th century,² there is nothing to show that the *Daśakumāra* cannot be placed much earlier.³ The use of rare words, grammatical solecisms and stylistic peculiarities of the *Daśakumāra* again, on which stress is sometimes laid for a comparatively late date, admit of an entirely opposite, but more reasonable, explanation of an early date, which is also suggested by the fact that the romance has certainly none of the affected prose and developed form of those of Subandhu and Bāṇa. The picture of the so-called degenerate society painted by Daṇḍin is also no argument for a late date; for it would apply equally well to the *Mṛcchakaṭika* and the *Caturbhāṇī*, the earliness of which cannot be doubted and to which the *Daśakumāra* bears a more than superficial resemblance in spirit, style and diction.⁴

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¹ Ed. H. H. Wilson, London 1846; ed. G. Bühler and P. Peterson, in two pts., Bombay 1887, 1891, revised in one vol. by G. J. Agashe, Bombay 1919; with four comms. (Padacandrikā, Padadīpikā, Bhūṣaṇā and Laghudīpikā), ed. N. B. Godabole and Vasudeva L Pansikar, NSP, 10th ed., Bombay 1925. (1st ed. with two comm., 1883; 2nd ed. with three comm., 1889). Trs. into English (freely) by P. W. Jacob (Hindu Tales), London 1873, revised by C. A. Rylands, London 1928; by A. W. Ryder, Chicago 1927. Trs. into German by J. J. Meyer, Leipzig 1902, and by J. Hertel, in *Ind. Erzähler* 1-3, Leipzig 1902; trs. into French by H. Fauche in Une Tétrade, ou drame, hymne, roman et poème, ii, Paris 1862. Editions with Engl. trs. also published in India by M. R. Kale, Bombay 1926, and by C. Sankararama Sastri, Madras 1931.

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¹ The attribution of three works to Daṇḍin by Rājaśekhara and the needless conjectures about them are no longer of much value; see S. K. De, *Sanskrit Poetics*, I, p. 62 note and p. 72.

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² Agashe, *op. cit.*, pp. xxv-xxxv.

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³ See Mark Collins, *The Geographical Data of the Raghuvaṁśa and the Daśakumāracarita* (Diss.), Leipzig 1907, p. 46.

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¹ Mark Collins, *op. cit.* p. 9 f.

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² S. K. De, *Sanskrit Poetics*, I. p. 58 f., in spite of Keith's advocacy (*Indian Studies in honour of Lanman*, Cambridge Mass., 1929, p. 167 f.) of an earlier date for the *Kāvyādarśa* on the ground of Daṇḍin's priority to Bhāmaha. This is not the place to enter into the reopened question, but there is still reason to believe that the presumption of Bhāmaha's priority will survive Keith's strenuous onslaught.

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³ The alleged relation of Bhāravi to Daṇḍin of the *Daśakumāra* (see S. K. De in *IHQ*, I, p. 31 f.; III, p. 395-96; G. Harihara Sastri in *ibid*, III, pp. 169-71), would place him towards the close of the 7th and beginning of the 8th century A. D.,—a date which is near enough to that of Daṇḍin of the *Kāvyādarśa*; but the reliability of the account is not beyond question (see Keith, *HSL*, preface, p. xvi).

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⁴ Weber (*Indische Streifen*, Berlin 1868, pp. 311-15, 353), Meyer (*op. cit.*, pp. 120-27) and Collins (*op. cit.*, p. 48) would place *Daśakumāra* some time before 585 A. D. In discussing the question, however, it is better not to confuse the issue by presuming beforehand the identity of the romancer and the rhetorician. Agashe's impossible dating at the 11th or 12th century is based on deductions from very slender and uncertain data. The fact that the *Daśakumāra* is not quoted in the antnological literature before the 11th century or that adaptations in the vernacular were not produced before the 13th, are arguments from silence which do not prove much. Agashe, however, does not rightly accept the worthless legend, relied upon by Wilson, which makes Daṇḍin an ornament of the court of Bhoja. The reference to Bhoja-vaṁśa in Ullāsa viii (ed. Agashe, p. 129) does not support this hypothesis, for Kālidāsa also uses the name Bhoja, referring probably to the rulers of Vidarbha.

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The *Daśakumāra-carita* in its present form, shows, with Bāṇa's two romances, the peculiarity of having been left unfinished, but it also lacks an authentic beginning. The end is usually supplied by a supplement in four Ucchvāsas, called Uttara-pīṭhikā or Śeṣa, which is now known to be the work of a comparatively modern Deccan writer named Cakrapāṇi Dīkṣita,¹ son of Candramauli Dīkṣita; but a ninth or concluding Ucchvāsa by Padmanābha² and a continuation by Mahārājādhirāja Gopīnātha³ are also known to exist. The beinning is found similarly in a Prelude, called Pūrva-pīṭhikā,⁴ in five Ucchvāsas, which is believed on good grounds to be the work of some other hand than that of Daṇḍin. The title *Daśakumāra-carita* suggests that we are to expect accounts of the adventures of ten princes, but the present extent of Daṇḍin's work proper contains, with an abrupt commencement, eight of these in eight Ucchvāsas. The Pūrva-pīṭhikā was, therefore, obviously intended to supply not only the framework of the stories but also the missing stories of two more princes; while the Uttara-pīṭhikā undertakes to conclude the story of Viśruta left incomplete in the last chapter of Daṇḍin's work. Like the Uttara-pīṭhikā, the Pūrva-pīṭhikā which was apparently not accorded general acceptance, exists in various forms,⁵ and the details of the tales do not agree in all versions nor with the body of Daṇḍin's genuiue text.

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¹ Eggeling, *Ind. Office Cat.*, vii, no. 4069/2934, p. 1553.

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² Agashe, *op. cit.*, p. xxiv.

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³ Wilson, introd., p. 30; Eggeling, *op. cit.*, vii, no. 4070/1850, p. 1554.

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⁴ Some MSS (e.g., India Office MS. no. 4059/2694; Eggeling, *op. cit.*, vii, p. 1551) and some early editions (e.g., the Calcutta ed. of Madan Mohan Tarakalamkar, 1849) do not contain the Pūrva-pīṭhikā. The ed. of Wilson and others include it. Wilson ventured the conjecture that the Prelude is the work of one of Daṇḍin's disciples; but in view of the various forms in which it is now known to exist and also because it is missing in some MSS, this conjecture must be discarded. Some of the versions are also obviously late productions.

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⁵ The version, which begins with the solitary benedictory stanza *brahmāṇḍa-chatra-daṇḍa* and narrates, in five Ucchvāsas, the missing stories of the two princes Puṣpodbhava and Somadatta, along with that of the missing part of the story of Rājavāhana and his lady-love Avantisundarī is the usually accepted Prelude, found in most MSS. and printed editions. Its spurious character has been shown by Agashe. It is remarkable that the usual metrical beginning required by theory at the outset of a Kathā or Ākhyāyikā is missing here. The benedictory stanza however, is quoted anonymously in Bhoja's *Sarasvatī-kaṇṭhābharaṇa* (ed. Borooah, 1884, p. 114); the fact would indicate that this Prelude must have been prefixed at least before 11th century. Another Prelude by Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa is given in App. to Agashe's ed., while still another in verse by Vināyaka in three chapters is noticed by Eggeling, *op. cit.*, vii, no. 40671/586a, p. 1553. M. R. Kavi published (Madras 1924) a fragmentary *Avantisundarī-kathā* in prose (with a metrical summary called *°Kathā-sāra*), which is ascribed to Daṇḍin as the lost Pūrva-pīṭhikā of his romance, but this is quite implausible; see S. K. De in *IHQ* I, p. 31 f. and III, p. 394 f.

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So far as Daṇḍin's own narrative goes, each of the seven princes, who are the friends and associates of the chief hero, Rājavāhana, recounts his adventure, in the course of which each carves out his own career and secures a princely spouse. But the work opens abruptly with an account of Rājavāhana, made captive and led in an expedition against Campā, where in the course of a turmoil he finds all the rest of his companions. By his desire they severally relate their adventures, which are comprised in each of the remaining seven chapters. The rather complex story of Apahāravarman, which comes in the second Ucchvāsa, is one of the longest and best in the collection, being rich in varied incidents and interesting characters. The seduction practised on the ascetic Marīci by the accomplished courtesan, Kāmamañjarī, who also deceives the merchant Vastupāla, strips him to the loin-cloth and turns him into a Jaina monk; the adventure in the gambling house; the ancient art of thieving¹ in which the hero is proficient; the punishing of the old misers of Campā who are taught that the goods of the world are perishable; the motif of the inexhaustible purse; all these, described with considerable humour and vividness, are woven cleverly into this tale of the Indian Robin Hood, who plunders the rich to pay the poor, unites lovers and reinstates unfortunate victims of meanness and treachery. The next tale of Upahāravarman is not equally interesting, but it is not devoid of incident and character; it is the story of the recovery of the lost kingdom of the hero's father by means of a trick, including the winning of the queen's favour, murder and pretended transformation¹ by power of magic into the dissolute king who had usurped. The succeeding story of Arthapāla is very similar in its theme of resuscitation of his father's lost rank as the disgraced minister of the king of Kāśī, and incidental winning of Princess Maṇikarṇikā, but it has nothing very striking except the pretended use of the device of snake-charm. The fifth story of Pramati introduces the common motif of a dream-vision of the Princess Navamālikā of Śrāvastī, and describes how the hero, in the dress of a woman, contrives (by the trick of being left as a deposit) to enter the royal apartments and have access to the princess; but it also gives an incidental account of the somewhat unconventional watching of a cock-fight by a Brahman! The sixth story of Mitragupta, who wins Princess Kandukavatī of Dāmaliptā in the Suhma country, is varied by introducing adventures on the high seas and on a distant island, and by enclosing, after the manner of the *Vetāla-pañcaviṃśati*, four ingenious tales, recounted in reply to the question of a demon, namely, those of Dhūminī, Gominī, Nimbavatī and Nitambavatī, all of which illustrate the maxim that cunning alone is the way to success. The seventh tale of Mantragupta is a literary *tour de force*, in which no labial letters are used by the narrator, because his lips have been made sore by the passionate kisses of his beloved. It begins with the episode of a weird ascetic and his two ministering goblins, repeats the device of pretended transformation through magic into a murdered man, and places the incidents on the sea-coast of Kaliṅga and Andhra. The last incomplete narrative of Viśruta relates the restoration of the hero's protégé, a young prince of Vidarbha, to power by a similar clever, but not over-scrupulous, contrivance, including the ingenious spreading of a false rumour, the use of a poisoned chaplet and the employment of a successful fraud in the name and presence of the image of Durgā; but the arguments defending idle pleasures, which speak the language of the profligate of all ages, as well as the introduction of dancers and jugglers and their amusing sleight of hand, are interesting touches.

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¹ On the art of thieving., see Bloomfield in *Amer. Journ. of Philology*, XLIV, 1923, pp. 97-123, 193-229 and *Proc. of the Amer. Philosophical Soc.*, LII, pp. 616-50. On burglary as a literery theme, see L. H. Gray in *WZKM*, XVIII, 1904, pp. 50-51. Śarvilaka in the *Mṛcchakaṭika* is also a scientific thief, with his paraphernalia, like Apahāravarman.

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¹ *On the art of entering another's body as a fiction-motif*, see M. Bloomfield in *Proc. American Philosophical Soc.*, LVI, 1917, pp. 1-43.

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It will be seen at once that Daṇḍin's work differs remarkably from such normal specimens of the Prose Kāvya as those of Subandhu and Bāṇa; and it is no wonder that its unconventionality is not favoured by theorist, in whose rhetorical treatises Daṇḍin is not cited till the 11th century A.D. The *Daśakumāracarita* is rightly described as a romance of roguery. In this respect, it is comparable, to a certain extent, to the *Mṛcchakaṭika*, which is also a drama full of rascals, and to the four old Bhāṇas, ascribed to Śyāmilaka, Iśvaradatta and others; but rescality is not the main topic of interest in Śūdraka's drama, nor is the Bhāṇa, as a class of composition, debarred by theory from dealing with low characters and themes of love, revelry and gambling. Daṇḍin's work, on the other hand, derives its supreme flavour from the vivid and picturesque exposition of such characters and themes. Although the romantic interest is not altogether wanting, and marvel and magic and winning of maidens find a place, it is concerned primarily with the adventures of clever tricksters. Daṇḍin deliberately violates the prescription that the Prose Kāvya, being a sub-division of the Kāvya in general, should have a good subject (Sadāśraya) and that the hero should be noble and high-souled. Gambling, burglary, cunning, fraud, violence murder, impersonation, abduction and illicit love form, jointly and severally, the predominating incidents in every story; and Mantragupta's definition of love as the determination to possess—de l'audace in Danton's famous phrase—is indeed typical of its erotic situations. Wilson, with his mid-Victorian sense of propriety, speaks of the loose principles and lax morals of the work, and the opinion has been repeated in a modified form by some modern critics; but the point is overlooked that immorality, rather than morality, is its deliberate theme. The *Daśakumāra* is imaginative fiction, but it approaches in spirit to the picaresque romance of modern Europe, which gives a lively picture of rakes and ruffians of great cities. It is not an open satire, but the whole trend is remarkably satirical in utilising, with no small power of observation and caricature, the amusing possibilities of incorrigible rakes, unscrupulous rogues, hypocritical ascetics, frudulent priests, light-hearted idlers, fervent lovers, cunning bawds, unfaithful wives and heartless courtesans, who jostle with each other within the small compass of the swift and racy narratives. The scenes are accordingly laid in cosmopolitan cities where the scum and refuse of all countries and societies meet. Even the higher world of gods, princes and Brahmans is regarded with little respect. The gods are brought in to justify disgraceful deeds in which the princes engage themselves; the Buddhist nuns act as procuresses; the teaching of the Jina is declared by a Jaina monk to be nothing but a swindle; and the Brahman's greed of gold and love of cock-fights are held up to ridicule. Two chief motives which actuate the princes of wild deeds are the desire for delights of love and for the possession of a realm, but they are not at all fastidious about the means they employ to gain their ends. Their frankness often borders on cynicism and, if not on a lack of morality, on fundamental non-morality.

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It is a strange world in which we move, life-like, no doubt, in its skilful portraiture, but in a sense unreal, being sublimated with marvel and magic, which are seldom dissociated from folk-tale. We hear of a collyrium which produces invisibility, of a captive's chains transformed deliciously into a beautiful nymph, of burglar's art which turns beggars into millionaires, and of magician's charms which spirit away maidens. This trait appears to have been inherited from the popular tale, and Daṇḍin's indebtedness to the *Bṛhatkathā* has been industriously traced.¹ But the treatment undoubtedly is Daṇḍin's own. He is successful in further developing the lively elements of the popular tale, to which he judiciously applies the literary polish and sensibility of the Kāvya; but the one is never allowed to overpower the other. The brier of realism and the rose of romance are cleverly combined in a unique literary form. In the laboured compositions of Subandhu and Bāṇa the exclusive tendency towards the sentimental and the erotic leads to a diminishing of interest in the narrative or in its comic possiblities. The impression that one receives from Daṇḍin's work, on the other hand, is that it delights to caricature and satirise certain aspects of contemporary society in an interesting period. Its power of vivid characterisation realises this object by presenting, not a limited number of types, but a large variety of individuals, including minor characters not altogether devoid of reality and interest. There can be little doubt that most of these are studies from life, heightened indeed, but faithful; not wholly agreeable, but free from the touch alike of mawkishness and affectation. It is remarkable that in these pictures the realistic does not quench the artistic, but the merely finical gives way to the vividly authentic. We pass from pageantry to conduct, from convention to impression, from abstraction to fact. There are abundant instances of the author's sense of humour, his wit and polite banter, his power of gentle satire and caricature, which effectively contribute to the realism of his outlook. For the first time, these qualities rare enough in the normal Sanskrit writing, reveal themeselves in a literary from, and make Daṇḍin's delightfully unethical romancero picaresco, not a conventional Prose Kāvya, but a distinct literary creation of a new type in Sanskrit.

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¹ Agashe, *op. cit.*, p. xli f.

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There is more matter, but the manner has no difficulty in joining hands with it. Daṇḍin's work avoids the extended scale and leisurely manner of proceeding, the elaborate descriptive and sentimental divagations, the eccentricities of taste and extravagance of diction, which are derived from the tradition of the regular Kavya and developed to its utmost possibilities or impossibilities in the imaginative romances of Subandhu and Baṇa. The arrangement of the tales is judicious, and the comparatively swift and easy narrative is never overloaded by constant and enormous digressions. The episodic method is old and forms a striking feature of Indian story-telling, but in the *Daśakumāra* the subsidiary stories never beat out, hamper nor hold up the course of the main narrative. Even the four clever stories in the sixth Ucchvāsa are properly emboxed, and we are spared the endless confusion of curses and changing personalities and stories within stories.

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Not only Daṇḍin's treatment, but also his style and diction are saved from the fatal fault of over-elaboration by his sense of proportion and restraint. He is by no means an easy writer, but there are no fatiguing complexities in his diction; it is energetic and yet elegantly articulated. It is not marked by any inordinate love for disproportionate compounds and sesquipedalian sentences, nor by a weakness for far-fetched allusions, complex puns and jingling of meaningless sounds. The advantage of such a style, free from ponderous construction and wearisome embellishment, is obvious for the graphic dressing up of its unconventional subjects of a cheat, a hypocrite, an amorist or a braggadacio; and the Kavya-refinements would have been wholly out of place. Occasionally indeed Daṇḍin indulges in florid descriptions, such as we find in the pictures of the sleeping Ambalikā or the dancing Kandukavatī, but even in these cases he keeps within the limits of a few long sentences or only one printed page. There is an attempt at a literary feat in the avoidance of labial sounds in the seventh Ucchvāsa, but it is adequately motived; and Dṇḍin wisely confines himself to a sparing use of such verbal ingenuity. It is not suggested that Daṇḍin makes no pretension to ornament, but, in the main, his use of it is effective, limited and pretty, and not recondite, incessant and tiresome.

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The highest praise goes to Daṇḍin as the master of vigorous and elegant Sanskrit prose ; and his work, in its artistic and social challanges, is undoubtedly a unique masterpiece, the merits of which need not be reluctantly recognised by modern taste for not conforming to the normal model.

c. Subandhu

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In theory and accepted practice, the normal type of the Prose Kāvya is illustrated, not by the work of Daṇḍin, but by those of Subandhu and Bāṇa. In these typical prose Kāvyas, however, there is less exuberance of life, the descriptions are more abundant and elaborate, the narrative is reduced to a mere skeleton, learning loads the wings of fancy, and the style and treatment lack ease and naturalness. They have no ruffian heroes, nor dubious adventures, but deal with chaste and noble, if somewhat sentimental and bookish, characters. They employ all the romantic devices, derived from folk-tale, of reborn heroes and transformed personages in a dreamland of marvellous but softer adventure, and present them in a gorgeous vehicle of elaborately poetical, but artificial, style.

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The date of Subandhu, author of the *Vāsavadattā*,¹ is not exactly known. Attempts have been made to establish its upper and the lower terminus, respectively, but Subandhu's punning allusion, on the one hand, to the Uddyotakara² and a supposed work of Dharmakīrti,³ belonging at least to the middle of the sixth century A.D., and, on the other, by Bāṇa's allusion to a *Vāsavadattā*, which is supposed to be the same as Subandhu's work of that name, in the preface to his *Harṣa-carita*,¹ composed early in the seventh century.² But it must be recognised that the question is not free from difficulty. Neither the date of Dharmakīrti nor that of the Uddyotakara can be taken as conclusively settled; nor is it beyond question, in the absence of the author's name, that Bāṇa really alludes to Subandhu's work. Even if the early part of the 7th century is taken to be the date of Dharmakīrti and the Uddyotakara, it would make Subandhu a contemporary of Bāṇa. The traditional view that Bāṇa wrote his romance to surpass that of Subandhu probably arose from Bāṇa's qualification of his own *Kādambarī* (st. 20) by the epithet *ati-dvayī* 'surpassing the two,' these two being, according to the very late commentator,³ Subandhu's *Vāsavadattā* and Guṇāḍhya's *Bṛhatkathā*. But the doubt expressed,⁴ though later abandoned,⁵ by Peterson has been lately revived. Since the arguments on both sides of the question⁶ proceed chiefly on the debatable grounds of the standard of taste and morals, and of style and diction, it is scarcely possible to express a final opinion without being dogmatic. The only one characteristic difference of Subandhu's prose from that of Bāṇa, apart from its being uninspiring, is the excessive, but self-imposed, use of paronomasia (Śleṣa); but this argues neither for priority nor posteriority, but only suggest the greater currency of this figure of speech in this period. The only certain point about Subandhu's date is the fact that in the first half of the 8th century, Vakpati in his Prakrit poem *Gauḍavaho* (st. 800) connects Subandhu's name with those of Bhasa, Kalidasa and Haricandra, and a little later in the same century, Vamana quotes anonymously¹ a passage which occurs, with a slight variation, in Subandhu's *Vāsavadattā*.²

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¹ Ed. F. Hall, Bibl. Ind., with comm. of Śivarāma Tripāṭhin, Calcutta 1859, reprinted almost *verbatim* by J. Vidyasagar, Calcutta 1874, 3rd ed. 1907 ; ed. R. V. Krishnamachariar with his own comm. Śrī Vāṇī-vilāsa Press, Srirangam 1906 ; ed. Louis H. Gray, in roman characters, Columbia University Press, New York 1913. Śivarāma belongs to the 18th century ; see S. K De, *Sanskrit Poetics*, I, p. 318. There is also an earlier comm. of Jagaddhara which deserves publication.

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² *nyāya-sthitim* (v. 1. *-vidyām) ivoddyotakara-svarūpām* (ed. Hall, p. 235 ; ed. Srirangam, p. 303 ; ed. Gray, p. 180).

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³ *bauddha-saṁgatim (v. 1. sat-kavi-kāvya-racanām) ivālaṁkāra-bhūṣitām, loc. cit.* It is remarkable that the reading is not found in all Mss (Hall, p. 236), and no work of Dharmakīrti's called Buddhasaṁgatyalaṁkāra has yet been found. Lévi (*Bulletin de l'E'cole Français d'Extrême-Orient*, 1903, p. 18) denies that Subandhu alludes to Dharmakīrti's literary activity.

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¹ Stanza 11. The argument that Bāṇa, by the use of Śleṣa in this stanza, means to imply Subandhu's fondness for it, is weak; for Bāṇa uses Śleṣa also in the stanzas on Bhāsa and the *Bṛhatkathā*.

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² Among other literary or historical allusions made by Subandhu, the reference to Vikramāditya and Kaṅka in the tenth introductory stanza has been made the basis of entirely problematic conjectures by Hall (p. 6), Hoernle (*JRAS*, 1903, p. 545 f.) and B. C. Mazumdar (*JRAS*, 1907, p. 406 f.); see L. H. Gray, introd., p. 8f. The description of Kusumapura and Subandhu's practice of the Gauḍī Rīti may suggest that he was an eastern writer, but the geography of the work is too conventional and the argument on Rīti too indefinite to be decisive. There are two other punning allusions by Subandhu, apparently to a Gaṇa-kārikā with a Vṛti by Surapāla (ed. Srirangam, p. 314) and an obscurely mentioned work by Kamalākara-bhikṣu (p. 319); but these have not yet been sufficiently recognised and traced.

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³ Bhānudatta, the commentator, belong to the 16th century. But the phrase *atidvayī* is not grammatically correct, and the reading appears to be doubtful. Possibly it is a graphical scribal error for *aniddhayā* (qualifying *dhiyā*) read by other commentators (*cf. OLD*, IV, no. 2, 1941, p. 7).

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⁴ Introd. to *Kādambarī*, pp. 71-73.

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⁵ Introd. to *Sbhv*, p. 133.

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⁶ See Kane, introd. to *Harṣa-carita*, p. xif; Weber, *Indische Streifen*, Berlin 1868, I, pp. 369-86; Telang in *JBRAS* XVIII, 1891, p. 147 f.; W. Cartellieri in *WZKM*, I, 1887, pp. 115-32; F. W. Thomas in *WZKM*, XII, 1898, pp. 21-23, also in *JRAS*, 1920, pp. 386-87; Mankowski in *WZKM*, XV, 1901, p. 246f. Keith in *JRAS*, 1914 (arguing that Subandhu cannot be safely ascribed to a period substantially before 650 A.D.); Sivaprasad Bhattacharya in *IHQ*, IV, 1929, p. 699f.—There is one passage to which attention does appear to have been drawn, but it is no less important. It describes the passionate condition of Vāsavadattā at the sight of Kandarpaketu and runs thus: *hṛdayaṁ vilikhitam iva utkīrṇaṁ iva, pratyuptaṁ iva, kīlitaṁ iva……vajralepa-ghaṭitaṁ iva……marmāntara-sthitaṁ iva*, which appears to be reproduced in a metrical form in the following three lines from Bhavabhūti's *Mālatī-mādhava* (v. 10):

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¹ *Kāvyālaṁkāra* i. 3. 25 (*kuliśa-śikhara-khara-nakhara*°)=*Vāsavadattā*, ed. Srirangam, p. 331 and ed. Hall, p. 226.

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² For other references to Subandhu and his work see Gray, pp. 3-4. Gray is right in thinking that the reference in the *Daśakumāra*° to Vāsavadattā clearly alludes to the story of Udayana and Vāsavadattā, and not to Vāsavadattā of Subandhu's romance.

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With the Vasavadatta of the Udayana legend, made famous by various poets in Sanskrit literature, Subandhu's romance has nothing common except the name; and since the story, as told by Subandhu, does not occur elsewhere in any form, it appears to be entirely invented and embellished by our poet. But the plot is neither rich nor striking. The handsome prince Kandarpaketu,

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*līneva pratibimbiteva likhitevotkīrṇa-rūpeva ca*
*pratyupteva ca vajralepa-ghaṭitevāntarnikhāteva ca* |
*sā naś cetasi kīliteva viśikhaiś cetobhuvaḥ pañcabhiḥ*…

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The verbal resemblance cannot be dismissed as accidental; but considering that Bhavabhūti here improves upon what he weaves into the texture of his poem and also the fact that Bhavabhūti is known to have borrowed phrases from Kālidāsa, the presumption of borrowing on the part of Bhavabhūti is likely.

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son of Cintāmaṇi, beholds in a dream a lovely maiden; and, setting out with his friend Makaranda in search of the unknown beloved and resting at night in the Vindhya hills under a tree, he overhears the conversation of a couple of parrots that princess Vāsavadattā of Pāṭaliputra, having similarly dreamt of Kandarpaketu, has sent her pet parrot, Tamālika, to find him. With the help of the kindly bird, the lovers unite; but as Śṛṅgāraśekhara, father of the princess, plans her marriage with a Vidyādhara chief, the lovers elope on a magic steed to the Vindhya hills. Early in the morning, while Kandarpaketu is still asleep, Vāsavadattā, straying into the forest, is chased by two gangs of Kirātas; but as they fall out and fight for her, she eludes them but trespasses into a hermitage, where she is turned into stone by the curse of the unchivalrous ascetic. Kandarpaketu, deterred from self-destruction by a voice from the sky, finds her after a long search, and at his touch the curse terminates.

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It will be seen that the central argument of such tales is weak and almost insignificant. The general scheme appears to consist of the falling in love of a passionate hero with a heroine of the fair and frail type, and their final union after a series of romantic adventures, in which all the naraative motifs¹ of dreamvision, talking parrots, magic steed, curse transformation and voice in the air are utilised. But the interest of the story-telling lies not in incident, but in minute portraiture of personal beauty of the lovers and their generous qualities, their ardent, if sentimental, longing for each other, the misfortune obstructing the fulfilment of their desires, their pangs of thwarted love, and the preservation of their love through all trials and difficulties until their final union. All this is eked out lavishly by the romantic commonplaces of the Kāvya, by highly flavoured descriptions of cities, battles, oceans, mountains, seasons, sunset, descriptions of cities, battles, occens, mountains, seasons, sunset, moonrise and the like, and by the display of enormous Śāstric learning and technical skill. Subandhu’s poverty of invention and characterisation, therefore, is not surprising; and criticism has been, not unjustly, levelled against the absurdities and inconsistencies of his story. But the slenderness of the theme is not so much a matter of importance to subandhu as the manner of developing or over-developing it. Stress has been rightly laid on his undoubted, if somewhat conventional, descriptive power; but the more than occasional descriptive digressions, forming the inseparable accessory of the Kāvya, constitute the bulk of his work, and are made merely the means of displaying his luxuriant rhetorical skill and multifarious learning. The attractiveness of the lady of Kandarpaketu’s vision, for instance, is outlined in a brief sentence of some one hundred and twenty lines only! The wise censure of Ānandavardhana¹ that the poets are often regardless of theme and sentiment and exceedingly engrossed in verbal tricks is more than just in its application to the Prose Kāvya of this type.

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¹ A list of these are made out by Cartellieri, *op. cit.* For a study of these motifs as literary devices see Gray in *WZKM*, XVIII, 1904, p. 39 f.

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¹ *Dhvanyāloka*, ed. NSP, Bombay 1911, p. 151.

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It must, however, be said to Subandhu’s credit that he is not overfond of long rolling compounds, and even when they occur, they are not altogether devoid of majesty and melody. When he has no need for a long sentence, he can write short ones, and this occurs notably in the beief dialogues. The sound-effects are not always tedious, nor his use of words always atrocious. What becomes wearisome in its abundance is Subandhu’s constant search for conceits, epithets and similes expressed in endless strings of paronomasia (Śleṣa) and apparent incongruity (Virodhābhāsa). For this reason, even his really coruscating ideas and images become more brilliant than luminous. When we are told that a lady is *rakta-pāda* like a grammatical treatise, her feet being painted with red lacquer as sections of grammar with red lines, or that the rising sun is blood-coloured, because the lion of dawn clawed the elephant of the night, we are taken to the verge of ludicrous fancy; but such instances abound from page to page.¹ In a stanza, the genuineness of which, however, is doubted, Subandhu describes his own work as a treasure-house of literary dexterity, and declares that he had woven a pun in every syllable of his composition. We have indeed the dictum of the *Kāvyādarśa* (ii. 362) that paronomasia generally enhances the charm of all poetic figures, and the extraordinary resources of Sanskrit permit its effective use, but the rhetorician probably never means that the paronomasia should overshadow everything. The richness of Subandhu's fancy and his ingenuity in this direction is indeed astonishing and justifies his boasting; but it cannot be said that he has used this figure with judgment or with the sense of visualisation which makes this, as well as other, figures a means of beautiful expression. Subandhu's paronomasias are often far-fetched and phantas-magoric, adduced only for the sake of cleverness, and involve much straining and even torturing of the language. It is true that in the stringing together of puns Subandhu does not stand alone. Bāṇa also makes much use of it, and refers to this habit of the Kathā when he describes it as *nirantara-śleṣa-ghana*. But Bāṇa never indulges in unceasing fireworks of puns and other devices, and his poetic imagination and power of picturesque description make ample amends for all his weakness for literary adornment. Subandhu, on the other hand, lacks these saving graces; nor does he command the humour, vigour and variety of Daṇḍin. He becomes, therefore, a willing victim of the cult of style, which believes that nothing great can be produced in the ordinary way.

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