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Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v1.c39: XXI Jayadeva

Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v1.c39

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XXI Jayadeva

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Jayadeva, author of the popular text-book *Candrā-loka*, is otherwise known as Pīyūṣavarṣa (i 2)¹, and himself gives us the names of his parents as Mahādeva and Sumitrā (i 16). The name Jayadeva, however, is borne by our author in common with many other Sanskrit writers. Of the fifteen different persons, mentioned by Aufrecht, as bearing the same name, it seems likely that our author is identical with the poet who wrote the well-known drama called the *Prasanna-rāghava*; for in the prologue to that drama there are two verses (i 14-15) which inform us that the dramatist was also the son of Mahādeva of the Kauṇḍinya-gotra and Sumitrā, a coincidence of names which does not seem to be accidental. Aufrecht, however, identifies² our author with Jayadeva who composed the well known lyric named *Gīta-govinda*; but apart from all arguments derived from the style and poetic genius of the two writers, which possess few kindred excellences, the fact that the author of the lyric, in one of his concluding verses¹, tells us that he was the son of Bhojadeva and Rāmādevī (or Vāmādevī or Rādhādevī, according to other readings) stands seriously against the proposed identification. The identity of Jayadeva with the logician Pakṣadhara, also called Jayadeva, is equally doubtful, and Aufrecht mentions the two names separately. The name Pakṣadhara, no doubt, was a mere title given to the logician from the circumstance of his having been able to maintain by subtle reasoning whatever side of a question he undertook to defend; but the argument for his identity with our Jayadeva, relied on by Hall², that Jayadeva in his drama refers (i 18) to his knowledge of pramāṇa, befitting a logician, is hardly convincing and sufficient³.

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¹ Also in a verse given at the end in some MSS, e. g. Peterson ii p. 109, Madras Cat. p. 8656: *pīyūṣavarṣa-prabhavam candrālokaṃ manoharam* etc. Also the verse *jayanti jājñika-śrīman-mahādevāṅga-janmanaḥ* | *sūkti-pīyūṣavarṣasya jayadeva-kaver giraḥ*, commented on in the *Śaradāgama* and the *Rākāgama* comms. These verses are wanting in the Calcutta ed.

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² *ZDMG* xxvii 30.

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¹ xii p. 171, ed. N.S. P., 1917. It is not commented upon by Kumbha in his Rasika-priyā comm., but Śaṅkara, in his Rasa-mañjarī comm. says : adhunā pitṛ-mātṛ-nāma-nibadhnan prāthayate sajjanān (ed. N. S. P. loc. cit). The same in the colophon in Bühler’s MSS (Kashmir Rep. p. 64), where read Rāmādevī for Rāmadeva.

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² Introd. to Sāṃkhya-pravacana-bhāṣya pp. 62-63 : Keith (Indian Logic p. 33f) appears to accept the identification.

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³ Jayadeva, author of a manual on Erotics, called Rati-mañjarī in 60 verses (ed. in Haeberlin and by Pavolini in

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The date of Jayadeva yet remains unsettled. There is hardly any doubt, however, that he should be placed earlier than Keśava Miśra, who cites (p. 47) the verse *kadali kadali* from the *Prasanna-rāghava* (i 37). As Keśava flourished in the middle of the 16th century, we may safely assign Jayadeva to a period earlier than that. This conclusion is supported by the fact that the *Śaradāgama* commentary on the *Candrāloka*, was composed by Pradyotana Bhaṭṭa in 1583 A.D.¹, under the patronage of a Bundella prince, named Virabhadra, of the the Vāghelā dynasty, who himself wrote a commentary on Vātsyāyana (called *Kandarpa cūḍāmaṇi*) in *saṃvat* 1633 = 1577 A.D.². We may push this limit to the date of Jayadeva's work back to the beginning of the 14th century, because two verses from the *Prasanna-rāghava* (i 19 and 33) are quoted in *Śārṅgadhara-paddhati* (164 and 3520), compiled in 1363 A.D. ; while Śiṅgabhūpāla, whose date has been fixed at 1330 A.D., cites the drama itself in his *Rasārṇava-sudhākara* (pp. 258, 277). This gives us one terminus to the date of Jayadeva in the first quarter of the 14th century³.

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¹ *AFl* no. 467 (51), p. 158 ; *ALeip* no. 820, p. 268.

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² Peterson ii pp. 66, 132 ; iv p. cxvi.

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³ Paranjpe and Panse in their edition (Poona, 1894) of the drama (p. xiii f) identify Jayadeva with the logician Pakṣadhara Jayadeva and assign him to a period between 1500 and 1577 A. D. So also Peterson in introd. to *Subhāṣ* p. 37f. Cf also Eggeling *IOC* iii pp. 332f. Winternitz (*Geschichte der Ind. Lit.* iii p. 26, fn 3) thinks that Jayadeva could not have written long before Appayya.

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*Giornale della Soc. Asiat. Italiana*, 1904, pp. 317f) is probably a different and later writer.

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The other terminus is given by the inference that Jayadeva is later than Ruyyaka; for in his *Candrāloka* he directly adopts some of the original definitions of poetic figures given for the first time by Ruyyaka. The figure *vikalpa*, for instance, which (as both Ruyyaka himself and Jayaratha inform us)¹ was invented and defined for the first time by Ruyyaka, is literally copied by Jayadeva (v 112). We cannot, therefore, place Jayadeva, who upholds the views peculiar to Ruyyaka as well as Mammaṭa, earlier than the second half of the 12th century.

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¹ Cf Jacobi in *ZDMG* lxii p. 60c, note 1. Ruyyaka says expressly with regard to this figure: *pūrvair akṛta-viveko'tra darśita ityavagantavyam*, upon which Jayaratha remarks: *anena'sra granthakṛd-upajñatvam eva darśitam* (p. 159).

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Jayadeva, therefore, should be assigned to the period between the last quarter of the 12th century and the first quarter of the 14th, a closer approximation

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all these scholars appear to have overlooked this quotation in *Śārṅgadhara*. No chronological conclusion is inferable from Jayadeva's mention of the poet Cora; for Bühler's identification of this poet with Bilhaṇa is not free from doubt (see Solf, *Die Kashmir Recension der Pañcāśikā*, Kiel 1886, p. xxif). Nor should stress be laid on the fact that verses from the *Prasanna-rāghava* occur in the *Mahānāṭaka*; for the date of the latter, as well as its proper text, cannot be taken to have been satisfactorily settled (see Lévi ii p. 48; Sten Konow, *Ind. Drama* pp. 88-9). Jayadeva himself, as a rhetorician, is quoted by very late writers like Appayya, Keśava and Bhīmasena.

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than which is not possible at present; and perhaps we may tentatively place him in the 13th century.

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The *Candrāloka* is a general treatise on Poetics in ten chapters (called *mayūkhas*). The Calcutta edition of the text, published in 1874¹, enumerates the following divisions: (1) Vāg-vicāra (*śl.* 16) (2) Doṣa-nirūpaṇa (*śl.* 44½) (3) Lakṣaṇa-nirūpaṇa (*śl.* 11) (4) Guṇa-nirūpaṇa (*śl.* 12) (5) Alaṃkāra-nirūpaṇa, consisting of Śabdālaṃkāras (*śl.* 10), Alaṃkārânukramaṇikā (*śl.* 16), and Arthālaṃkāras (*śl.* 174) (6) Rasādi-nirūpaṇa (*śl.* 24) (7) Dhvani-nirūpaṇa *śl.* 18) (8) Guṇībhūta-vyaṅgya (*śl.* 10) (9) Lakṣaṇā-nirūpaṇa (*śl.* 15) (10) Abhidhā-nirūpaṇa (*śl.* 4). This arrangement is substantially followed in the Leipzig MS 819 (which contains only 5 *mayūkhas*) and correspond closely with the arrangement mentioned by Gaṅgādhara in his commentary (p.9) on Appayya's *Kuvalayānanda*, where the chapters are given thus: 1. Śabda-mayūkha 2. Doṣa-mayūkha 3. Lakṣaṇa-mayūkha 4. Guṇa-mayūkha 5. Alaṃkāra-mayūkha 6. Rasa-mayūkha 7. Dhvani-mayūkha 8. Guṇībhūtavyaṅgya-mayūkha 9. Lakṣaṇā-mayūkha and 10 Tatśakti (= Abhidhā)-mayūkha².

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¹ The Calcutta edition (by Jīvānanda) of 1906 substantially keeps to this arrangement and numbering of verses in the different chapters.

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² The text as commented upon by Pradyotana Bhaṭṭa, Gāgābhaṭṭa and Vaidyanātha (*Madras Cat.* 12876-78)

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It will seen from this that the section on Arthālaṃkāra in chapter v is the most considerable part of the work, which appears to have become, to the exclusion of the rest of the work, a favourite manual of poetic figures It was specially adapted for this purpose by Appayya Dīkṣita's Kuvalayānanda, which bodily incorporates the kārikās of this section (with only slight modifications), himself only writing the running prose commentary and adding a few supplementary figures. This work of Appayya's, therefore, may be regarded, in a sense, as a commentary on this chapter of the Candrāloka. Appayya himself indicates his indebtedness in one of the prefatory verses¹ by saying that the definition-stanzas of the Candrāloka are borrowed in his own work, but there are a few modifications and additions² of his own. He also explains in the concluding verse how his work came to be called Kuvalayānanda (lit. "delight of lotuses") from the Candrāloka (lit. "the sight or light of the moon"):

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¹ yeṣāṃ candrāloke dṛśyante lakṣya-lakṣaṇa-ślokāḥ priyas ta eva, teṣāṃ itareṣāṃ tvabhinavā viracyante.

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² The differences of reading in the kārikās are noted in Hālāsynātha Śāstrī's ed. of Kuvalayānanda (with the Rasikarañjanī of Gaṅgādhara), Kumbhakonum 1892.

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candrāloko vijayatām, śaradāgama-sambhavah
hṛdyaḥ kuvalayānando yat-prasādāt abhūd ayam,

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which, apart from the obvious pun involved, praises the Candrāloka, the cause of its commentary called contains these ten mayūkhas. MSS of the complete text noticed also in Mitra ii p. 177, v p. 103, ix p 184 : Peterson ii 109.

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*Śaradāgama*, from the contact of both of which the charming *Kuvalayānanda* originated. This *Śaradāgama* commentary apparently refers to the commentary of the same name on the *Candrāloka*, composed by Pradyotana Bhaṭṭa in 1583 A. D.¹

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¹ Cf Gaṅgādhara on *Kuvalay°* p. 9 : *candrāloko’rthālaṃkārātmaka eva, na tvanya iti keṣiṃcid bhramaḥ*.

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But on account of the wholesale appropiation of this chapter of Jayadeva’s work, the title *Candrāloka* appears to have been frequently applied to the *arthālaṃkāra*-section of the work² alone, as well as to Appayya’s *Kuvalayānanda*³ itself. Thus the India

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³ Thus Regnaud (*Rhétorique Sanskrite* p. 375) speaks of the *Candrāloka* as being composed of 151 *ślokas*, dealing

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I Vaidyanātha, apparently ignorant of the existence of the *Śaradāgama* commentary, interprets (ed. N. S. P. 1917 p. 188) the phrase *śaradāgama sambhavaḥ* as referring to some previous original of the *Candrāloka* itself. An instance of similar ignorance on the part of the commentator is given by the story of Āśādhara in his comm. on the *Kuvalay°* (p. 86) that Appayya composed the *Candrāloka* itself at the request of the king of Veṅkaṭagiri, and later on wrote his *Kuvalay°* on its basis. Gaṅgādhara, a more reliable commentator on Appayya’s work (who tells us that Appayya was the *guru* of a brother of his grandfather) interprets the phrase correctly as: *atra candrāloka-nāmā granthaḥ śaradāgama-nāmnā ṭīkā-granthena sambhava utpattiḥ* (p. 283). The supposition (*SgŚ* ii pp. 68-9) that Appayya’s utilisation of Jayadeva’s work was resented by the latter, who is said to have made a veiled reference to this fact in the prologue to the *Prasanna-rāghava* (where the stage-manager alludes to the stealing of his name) is disproved by the fact that Appayya lived long after Jayadeva.

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Office MS 2656, Weber 1721 and Madras MSS 12871-74 constitute in reality the *arthālaṃkāra*-section of the *Candrāloka*, embodied in the *Kuvalayānanda*, and not the whole text, but they are entitled *Candrāloka*. Appayya’s work does not end with the hundred poetic figures dealt with by Jayadeva, but it adds a supplementary chapter on a few additional figures. In some texts of the *Candrāloka* this appears to have been erroneously included. A considerable confusion is also noticeable in the different MSS of Jayadeva’s and Appayya’s works as to the arrangement of the three opening verses, as well as with regard to the total number of *ślokas* contained in the *arthālaṃkāra*-section. The verse *paraspara-tapaḥ-sampat*⁰ occurs in most accepted texts of this section of the *Candrāloka*, but it is not intelligible why Jayadeva should add this benedictory verse in a chapter, which occurs in the middle of the book. Gaṅgādhara pointedly remarks that this verse is not Jayadeva’s, but was composed by Appayya himself as prefatory to his own work¹.

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¹ Gaṅgādhara *op. cit.* p. 9: "*tathā paraspara-tapaḥ-sampat* iti *candrāloka-nāndī-śloka* ityapi *bhrama* eva ; *pañcama-mayūkhe śadhālaṃkārān nirūpya* “*upamā yatra sād-śya*” ityādinā *arthālaṃkāra-prastāve nāndyā evābhāvāt*." The same remark applies apparently to the second verse *alaṃkāreṣu bālānām* and to v 174 which alludes to Veṅkaṭaprabhu”; for they are probably Appayya’s additions. Cf *IOC* iii pp. 333-34 for a discussion of this point.

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with the definition and illustration of poetic figures, which description applies to the *Kuvalaya*⁰.

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⁰ [The superscript 0 appears to be a typo or artifact in the original text, likely intended to be a footnote marker or just a stray mark. I will transcribe it as it appears.]

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