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A History of Sanskrit Literature c14.s2: 2. The Beginnings of History

A History of Sanskrit Literature c14.s2

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English

2. The Beginnings of History

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The Purāṇas, as we have them, contain amidst vast masses of other matter, religious and social, some traces of the activity of court poets who made genealogies, but the value of these notices is of the most limited description; the lists of names and dates alone which is what they normally contribute are regularly, when compared with our more reliable evidence, hopelessly inaccurate, showing that at the time when they came into being the interest of genealogists was rather edification by constructing pleasing ancestries than accurate record of facts. It may indeed be doubted whether with the most critical care anything could be retrieved of substantial value additional to other sources of information; hitherto they have been treated only without critical judgement or acumen.¹ Beside them may be put the lists of teachers which occasionally are recorded in later Vedic texts, but which are anything but free from suspicion of interpolation and exaggeration, though they prove, what was hardly dubious in any event, that there prevailed the practice of remembering series of teachers and pupils. The Buddhists made some more serious approach to history in their legends of the Buddha, but, valuable as is the matter which they have preserved, it remains clear, from their greatest creation,² the *Mahāvaṁsa* of Mahānāman in the fifth century A. D., that during the passage of the centuries the monks had not acquired any real historical sense. A king like Açoka was, of course, a model of pious deeds, but not the slightest attempt is made to treat his life and efforts in an historical spirit; instead, we learn of the courteous action of the wild beasts and birds who come to the royal kitchen and die there, to prevent the sin of slaying them for food, of miracle-performing snakes, and sages who come down to earth to cleanse the community of heretics. Even in contemporary times the poet is untrustworthy; all is looked at merely from the point of view of the attitude of the king for the time being towards the special community of monks among whom the author lived. Still less, of course, do we find history among the Jains; their Paṭṭāvalis, kept doubtless from early times but only recorded rather late, preserve lists of pontiffs, they had a stereotyped life of their Tīrthakaras, and endeavoured to attach Jain legends to such names as that of Candragupta,³ but serious history was repugnant to them. Eulogies of saints are common to the sects, but serious historical work is quite unknown.

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¹ To ascribe authority for the period 1000–500 B. C. to works that know nothing of the 3rd cent. A. D. is foolish. See Keith, EHR. 1922, pp. 607 f.

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² Geiger, *Dīpavaṁsa und Mahāvaṁsa*; Oldenberg, *Aus dem alten Indien*, pp. 77 ff.

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³ Smith's acceptance (EHI. p. 154) of the legend of his resignation is quite unconvincing.

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Poetic merit of a modest kind, however, may be found from time to time in the inscriptions which are the most substantial early contribution to Indian history. The most valuable in this regard are the encomia, Praçastis, of which we have already noted specimens of the Gupta age. The typical Praçasti¹ is simple in structure; after a benediction, it proceeds to describe the donor, and, when the two are not identical, the reigning prince, giving in either case some genealogical information, then it sets out the donation and enumerates any conditions or privileges accompanying it, such as freedom from interference by the royal officers or remission of taxation, invokes the favour of heaven for the maintenance of the memorial, utters imprecations on any person interfering with the donation, and sets out the name of the architect who constructed it, the priest who consecrated it, the poet, and the scribe who engraved the letters, with in many cases the date. The form, of course, varies with the nature of the object on which it is engraved, temple, public building, copper plate, memorial of the dead, &c., but the historically interesting part is normally the genealogy and account, if any, of the deeds of the dedicator, if a king. These Praçastis may be quite short, ten or twelve lines, or they may even exceed a hundred lines, and their value as history and poetry differs enormously. What is fairly certain is that the genealogies are frequently 'faked'; the kings for whom they were composed desired to be connected either with fabled heroes and royal lines of old, or, especially in the south, desired to make out that they were scions of the great royal houses of the north. As poetry they do not normally merit admiration, for they are decidedly elaborate in form, if at all pretentious, and we are not favourably impressed by the self-confidence of that Rāma who in the eighth century calls himself Kaviçvara, lord of poets, and asserts that the goddess of eloquence dwelt in his childish mouth ere he had forgotten the taste of his mother's milk. His skill is of the type admired in India but less attractive to western taste; he composes a Stotra, hymn of praise, in which each of the fourteen stanzas applies equally well to Pārvatī as to her consort Çiva, and he exhibits by his choice of recondite constructions and rare words that he had studied diligently both grammar and lexica. The same curious device of including a Stotra in an inscription is seen in the case of Lalitasuradeva in the ninth century.¹ It is fair to say that not rarely there is found a poetical idea happily expressed in a panegyric both early and late, but in the main they are rather dreary and hackneyed documents.² And, what is vital, they represent merely a first step towards history.

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¹ See Bühler, WZKM. ii. 86 ff.; EI. i. 97 ff. Their form as a blend of prose and poetry is recognized in the later writers on poetics as a Biruda; *Sāhityadarpaṇa*, vi. 570. For a collection see *Prācīnalekhamālā*, KM. 34, 64, 80.

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¹ IA. xxv. 177 f.

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² Harṣa has some spirited lines; Jackson, *Priyadarśikā*, pp. xliii f.

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We can hardly say that we are carried further into the region of history by the *Harṣacarita* of Bāṇa, for, beyond a very few facts about his immediate predecessors, we are given merely a confused glimpse of a very small part of the deeds of Harṣa of Thānesar, and the work may best be treated as a romance, which it is in all essentials. As a nearer approach to history may be ranked the *Gaüḍavaha*³ of Vākpatirāja, which was written to celebrate the defeat of a Gauḍa prince by the poet's patron, Yaçovarman of Kanauj, who himself, however, was overthrown and killed not much later (*c.* 740) by Lalitāditya of Kashmir. Possibly this fact explains the curious condition of the poem, which contains as little history as possible, but expatiates instead in the wonted Kāvya manner in descriptions of scenery and the seasons, and of the amusements of kings, and does not scruple to relate myths. It may be that the poet, after his patron's death, left unfinished the poem which thus is merely a torso. The alternative is to suppose that we have in it as it stands a series of excerpts dealing with those topics which Paṇḍits liked, omitting tedious historical details. No certainty is possible; it may be that the poem is all that Vākpati ever intended to write. It is in Māhārāṣṭrī Prākrit, and, though it does not aim at plays on words and double meanings, it affects far too long compounds in the Gauḍa manner, nor does it normally reach any high standard of merit, though it contains some vivid pictures of village life—Māhārāṣṭrī poetry has always clung close to the soil—and the description of a southern temple of Kālī where human sacrifices are offered has the grim horror which attracts Indian taste. Uncertainty attends its date; it is characteristic of the poem that we do not even hear the name of the Gauḍa king; if written after Yaçovarman's fall it may be placed about A. D. 750.

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³ Ed. S. P. Pandit, BSS. 34, 1887; cf. Bühler, WZKM. i. 324 ff.; ii. 328 ff.; Smith, JRAS. 1908, pp. 765-93. Hertel's views (*Asia Major*, i) on Bhavabhūti and Vākpati carry no conviction.

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We are still far from serious history in the *Navasāhasāṅkacarita*¹ of Padmagupta, also called Parimala, whose work, in eighteen cantos, was written about 1005. It relates the mythical theme of the winning of the princess Çaçiprabhā, but is intended at the same time to allude to the history of king Sindhurāja Navasāhasāṅka of Mālava; we have by the hand of Bilhaṇa a similar example of this curious treatment in the drama *Karṇasundarī* in which he celebrates, under the guise of the marriage of a Caulukya prince to the daughter of a Vidyādhara king, an actual wedding of his patron to a princess. Obviously the method does not tend towards historical treatment or results. But the poet is by no means without the power of graceful expression, however impossible it may be to treat seriously his poem as a whole. Thus he has quite a happy conception in:

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¹ Ed. V. S. Islāmpurkar, BSS. 53, 1895; G. Bühler and Th. Zachariae, *Über das Navasāhasāṅkacharita* (1888). On his use of the Udgatā metre see Jacobi, ZDMG. xliii. 467; SIFI. VIII. ii. 110.

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*citravartiny api nṛpe tattvavegena cetasi*
*vrīḍārdhavalitaṁ cakre mukhendum avaçaiva sā.*

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‘As the truth pierced the soul of the king, though 'twas only his picture, the maiden made his moon-like forehead half-wrinkled with shame.’

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*āhāraṁ na karoti nāmbu pibati straiṇaṁ na saṁsevate*
*çete yat sikatāsu muktaviṣayaç caṇḍātapaṁ sevate*
*tvatpādābjarajaḥprasādakaṇikālābhonmukhas tan marau*
*manye Mālavasinha Gūrjarapatis tīvraṁ tapas tapyate.*

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‘He eats not nor drinks water; women he frequents not; he lies on the sand, indifferent to things of sense he courts the burning heat; surely, o Lion of Mālava, the lord of Gūrjara performs thus a dread penance there in the desert that he may become worthy to be honoured by touching the dust of thy lotus feet.’ Pretty is the following:

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*tatra sthitaṁ sthitimatā varadeva daivād: bhṛtyena te cakita-*
*cittam iyanty ahāni*
*utkampini stanataṭe hariṇekṣaṇānām: hārān pranartayati yatra*
*bhavatpratāpaḥ.*

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‘There, my noble liege, as fate willed, thy servant won a footing and abode for many days with troubled heart, where thy valour makes to dance the necklaces on the quivering breasts of the deer-eyed ladies.’ A more elaborate effort to depict the plight of the Gūrjara queen in her husband’s defeat is less successful:

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*magnāni dviṣatāṁ kulāni samare tvatkhaḍgadhārākule*
*nāthāsminn iti vandivāci bahuço deva çrutāyām purā*
*mugdhā Gūrjarabhūmipālamahiṣī pratyāçayā pāthasaḥ*
*kāntāre cakitā vimuñcati muhuḥ patyuḥ kṛpāṇe dṛçau.*

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‘As she wanders in terror in the forest, o King, the simple queen of Gūrjara’s lord gazes ever at her husband’s blade in her craving for water; has she not heard many a time the minstrels chant, “The hosts of the foe, o lord, have been drowned in the whirlpool of battle raised by the torrent of thy glaive”?’ The unfortunate lady is misled by the ambiguity of the term *magnāni* and of *dhārā*, which means both torrent and edge of a sword.

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We have only the name of Çaṅkuka, who wrote the *Bhuvanābhyudaya*, in which Kalhaṇa¹ tells us he described the dread battle of Mamma and Utpala (*c.* A. D. 850)

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¹ iv. 704 f. Cf. Peterson, *Subhāṣitāvali*, p. 127; Quackenbos, *The Sanskrit Poems of Mayūra*, pp. 50–2.

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*ruddhapravāhā yatrāsīd Vitastā subhaṭair hataiḥ*

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‘where the current of the Vitastā was stemmed by the bodies of the slain.’ The anthologies ascribe to a Çaṅkuka certain verses, but it is quite uncertain whether he is to be identified with this author; in the case of one verse the ascription is to Çaṅkuka Mayūra’s son, and it has been conjectured that the Mayūra meant may be the contemporary of Bāṇa (*c.* A. D. 630), though this is mere surmise. A Çaṅku figures in the list of jewels of Vikramāditya’s court; he may represent the tradition of one or other of these poets, if indeed they are to be identified.

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