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A History of Sanskrit Literature c16.s4: 4. Prākrit Lyrics

A History of Sanskrit Literature c16.s4

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4. Prākrit Lyrics

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Contemporaneously with the progress of the Sanskrit lyric, there was proceeding the development of a lyric in Prākrit, which later passed into Apabhrañça probably as a result of the achievements of the Ābhīras and the Gurjaras who, though known earlier, flooded India about the time of the Hūṇa invasions and, unlike the Hūṇas, settled down and definitely affected the culture of the country. The two streams of lyric cannot have existed without coming into contact, but there is singularly little sign of serious influence on either side in the early period of the development. Prākrit lyric as we have it in the *Sattasaī*⁵ of Hāla comes before us with a definite character of its own which is not reproduced in Sanskrit, though Govardhana in his *Saptaçatī* deliberately attempts to imitate it.

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⁵ Ed. and trans. A. Weber, AKM. v (1870) and vii (1881); IS. xvi; with Gaṅgādhara’s comm., KM. 21, 1889. The ascription of verses in the commentators varies greatly and is probably worthless. Cf. Winternitz, GIL. iii. 97 ff.

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Of the date of Hāla it is impossible to be certain. The mechanical method⁶ of assuming that he is to be looked for in the list of Sātavāhana kings and placing him in the first or second century A.D., because he ought to come about the middle of the list, and the dynasty extended on one view from *c.* 240 or 230 B.C. to A.D. 225, is clearly fallacious. What is much more important is that, to judge from the evidence of the Prākrits of Açvaghoṣa and the inscriptions, the weakening of consonants which is the dominant feature of Māhārāṣṭrī cannot have set in as we find it in Hāla until about A.D. 200. This make it likely that the poetry was produced in the period from A.D. 200 to 450,¹ though we have no assurance of the date. Moreover, only 430 stanzas have a place in all the recensions, so that we must admit that there has been extensive interpolation. It is possible, even probable, that in its origin the *Sattasaī* was no mere anthology, but a careful collection of verses largely his own or refashioned by himself—much as Burns refashioned some of his material—on the basis of older verses, and that in course of time by interpolation and change the collection lost much of its individuality. Even as it is, it has a spirit of closeness to life and common realities which is hardly to be seen in Sanskrit poetry. This may be a characteristic of the Māhārāṣṭra people who even to-day have a certain homeliness and rough good sense. But it must not be supposed that the *Sattasaī* is folk-poetry; the dialect is artificial, more so in some ways than Sanskrit, but it is the work of a poet or poets who wished really to express the feelings, as well as describe the externals, of the people of the land, the cowherds and cow-herdesses, the girl who tends the garden or grinds corn at the mill, the hunter, the handworker. The prevailing tone is gentle and pleasing, simple loves set among simple scenes, fostered by the seasons, for even winter brings lovers closer together, just as a rain-storm drives them to shelter with each other. The maiden begs the moon to touch her with the rays which have touched her beloved; she begs night to stay for ever, since the morn is to see her beloved’s departure. The lover in turn bids the thunder and lightning do their worst on him, if they but spare her whom he loves. The tenderness of the poet shows itself when he tells how a wife, rejoicing at her husband’s return, yet hesitates to don festal array lest she embitter the grief of her poor neighbour, whose husband yet delays his home-coming. The note of pathos is not absent; when of two who have long shared joy and sorrow together one dies, he alone is really alive, it is the other who dies; there is a distant parallel, not borrowing, in Bhavabhūti’s line, ‘He is not dead of whom a beloved thinks.’ But absence may be a joy where the heart is false; the faithless one bemoans her unprotected state, and begs her friend to come to her home, merely to secure her safety, *bien entendu*.

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⁶ Cf. EHI. p. 220; EI. xii. 320. We find in *horā* (435) and *aṁgāraavāra* (261) knowledge of Greek astrology.

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¹ Cf. Lüders, *Bruchstücke buddh. Dramen*, p. 64; Jacobi, *Ausg. Erzählungen in Mâhârâshṭrî*, pp. xiv ff.

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The varied forms of Indian love are brilliantly portrayed: from the real devotion when each looks into the other’s eyes, and the twain are made one for the moment, to the domestic joys of wedded life, as when mama laughs as the little boy crawls on his father’s back, when he lies at her feet in penitence for some fault, or when she shows the delighted papa the first tooth of their darling. The biting and scratching of Indian love are frankly depicted as well as the beauties of the maidens whose swelling bosoms are compared with the moon breaking through the cloud. Much is from the life of the village, but we hear also of the demi-monde of the towns, whose presence Pischel found in the *Ṛgveda* and which certainly has marked Indian literature ever since the Vedic age.

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Pictures of nature, sometimes as influenced by love, sometimes independently, are frequent and charming, echoing some of the thoughts of the *Therīgāthās* in which Buddhist nuns express their close observation of nature. Autumn, the rainy season, summer, and spring all evoke effective sketches; bees hover over flowers, the peacock and the crows enjoy the pelting rain, the female antelope seeks longingly her mate, male and female ape lend comedy. Gnomic sayings are not rare, and often very pithy; a miser’s money is as useful to him as his shadow to a traveller; only the deaf and the blind have a good time in the world, for the former do not hear harsh words, the latter do not see hateful faces. Other elements in the collection are fragments, dramatic or epic, or episodes of the folk-tale, as when we hear of a lady in captivity awaiting a rescuer, or women captured by robbers, or a naughty wife who pretends to be bitten by a scorpion in order to go to the house of the doctor who loves her. How far back go these fragments we do not know; our lower date for Hāla is purely speculative, though Bāṇa knew his collection, and even then we have no security for the existence even in Bāṇa’s time of any particular part.

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A later Prākrit anthology is the *Vajjālaggā*¹ of Jayavallabha, a Çvetāmbara Jain, of uncertain date, who deliberately collects matter to illustrate the three ends of man, conduct, practical wisdom, and love; to the latter topic falls two-thirds of the whole. The stanzas are in Āryā metre, and the Māhārāṣṭrī shows signs of influence by Apabhraṁça. Apabhraṁça lyric stanzas are given in some numbers by Hemacandra² to illustrate the type of Prākrit which he styles Apabhraṁça. They are of much the same character as those of Hāla. A damsel begs that her love be brought to her; a fire may burn down the house, but still men must have a fire. Another rejoices that her lover has fallen bravely in the field; hers had been the shame, had he returned dishonoured. The respect for a mother is prettily inculcated by the words of Vyāsa and the great sages who equate falling at the mother's feet in humble devotion with the act of bathing in the sacred waters of the Ganges.

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¹ J. Laber, *Über das Vajjālaggam* (1913); Jacobi, *Bhavisattakaha*, p. 61. It is being edited in BI.

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² Pischel, AGGW. v. 4 (1902).

Cites (4)