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A History of Sanskrit Literature c18.s4: 4. The Style and Language of the Pañcatantra

A History of Sanskrit Literature c18.s4

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4. The Style and Language of the Pañcatantra

c18.s4.1

There can be no doubt that the work was the production of an artist. The complex emboxment of the stories, which can be seen from the analysis above, is a very different thing from the epic simplicity, and not less characteristic is the intermingling of prose with gnomic stanzas and with title stanzas giving the moral inculcated in each tale with a hint of its characters, as when the tale of the bird who annoyed an ape regarding a glow-worm is introduced with 'You cannot bend wood that is unbendable; you cannot use a knife on a stone. Know from the fate of the bird Needlebeak that you cannot teach one who will not learn.' A model for the intermingling of prose and verse has been seen in the *Jātakamālā*; but, as we have seen, the character of that work is distinctly different; the verses there carry on the narrative, as is done but very seldom in the *Pañcatantra*, and usually where the emotion demands a finer expression than prose, or where a reported verse is essentially demanded by the narrative. Thus in the deer’s tale of his former captivity the verse he cites as uttered by himself is an essential factor of the story, serving the purpose of attracting the prince’s ear:

c18.s4.2

*vātavṛṣṭividhūtasya mṛgayūthasya dhāvataḥ*
*pṛṣṭhato ’nugamiṣyāmi kadā tan me bhaviṣyati?*

c18.s4.3

‘Ah, when will it be that I shall follow my herd as hither and thither the wind and the rain blow it on?’ Emotion, on the other hand, renders appropriate among other verses clearly gnomic the use by the hypocritical crocodile of stanzas in his address to the ape:

c18.s4.4

*ekaḥ sakhā priyo bhūya upakārī guṇānvitaḥ*
*hantavyaḥ strīnimittena kaṣṭam āpatitam mama.*

c18.s4.5

‘My one true friend, who hath done me so much of good, must now be slain for the sake of a woman. Woe is me.’ This may even be a quoted line from another context. In the following case that explanation is less likely, nor indeed is there any reason to suppose that the author might not add to his narrative some verses of immediate relevance to the matter in hand:

c18.s4.6

*prayojanavaçāt prītiṁ lokaḥ samanuvartate*
*tvaṁ tu vānaraçārdūla niṣprayojanavatsalaḥ.*

c18.s4.7

‘The world shows affection from self-interest. But thou, noblest of apes, art loving without such cause.’ But verses such as these are very few, and, apart from the title-verses, the poet’s effort has been devoted to finding or writing effective maxims. How far these were original we cannot possibly say in those cases in which we have no other early authority for them; but when they do not occur outside of the *Pañcatantra* we can fairly credit him with them. Some unquestionably he derived from the epic, and he may have taken thence¹ the hint for the construction of Book iii as a reminiscence of the omen, given to the defeated Kauravas by the crows who attack and destroy the owls by night, of the victory which they can win over the Pāṇḍavas by a night onslaught on their camp, and the idea of the doves carrying off the net of their captor. We are, however, in these matters of originality reduced to conjectures.

c18.s4.8

¹ *Mahābhārata* x. 1 and v. 64.

c18.s4.9

The fact that the author was probably carrying out an original piece of work doubtless accounts for various blemishes—of which, however, later redactors remove but a few. Even in the original there seems to have been an attempt to accumulate an undue number of maxims to the same purpose, and occasionally the tales do not fit in very well, indicating that the author desired to have the tale on record even if he could not find quite an effective mode of inserting it. This is clearly the case with the interesting tale (ii. 4) of the former captivity of the deer; it has no moral, properly speaking, but it is clearly a Märchen which the author and we would ill spare; to doubt its valid ascription to the original is clearly unnecessary; though it seems rather absurd for the deer to talk when he is anxious to be set free, we find that the mouse goes on cutting as the narrative proceeds, and in Book iii there are equally irrational delays while the owls debate; the delay is excused by the intention to give political instruction, as in modern opera the musical interest excuses delays in themselves ridiculous.

c18.s4.10

The language of the author is distinctly elegant, and especially in the verses we find plays on words, *double entendres*, and other marks of polished style combined with polished and elaborate metre. Some of the verses contain rather longer compounds than are usual in the simpler style of Kāvya; but there are few, if any, cases where real complexity of sense can be ascribed to the original. It is obvious that the author had taste, and realized that over-elaboration in style was out of place in a work destined for the use of young princes, and there is a decided humour in the decision to use a more elevated style for the story (i. 7) of the louse and the flea, which tells how by permitting a flea to assault the royal person the louse, which had long enjoyed a monopoly of that privilege, lost its life, through the over-haste of the flea to savour the extremely rich ichor of the royal person. The adoption of the same style in the story of the jackal which fell into an indigo vat and passed itself off as wearing the royal purple, an interpolation (i. 8) in the original text, shows that the nuance of style had been noted early. The prose has already, though not in exaggerated form, the signs of the nominal style noted above. The past is denoted either by participles, active or passive, or the historic present; the regular use of the aorist is one of the signs of the spuriousness of the tale of the wicked procuress found in the *Tantrākhyāyikā* (iii. 5). The passive construction is clearly coming to be preferred, resulting, as it does, in nominal verbal forms in lieu of finite forms, and thus according with the growing fondness for compounds. The employment of gerunds and adjectival participles is carried to excess.

c18.s4.11

Amusing as the stories are and well as they are told, though the practice of emboxment is, to tell the truth, rather irritating than otherwise in the more complex cases, the finest thing in the work is unquestionably the many excellent stanzas. Thus the virtues of magnanimity are expounded as follows:

c18.s4.12

*ājīvitāntaḥ praṇayaḥ kopaç ca kṣaṇabhaṅguraḥ*
*parityāgaç ca niḥsaṅgo na bhavanti mahātmanām?*

c18.s4.13

‘Is it not the way of the magnanimous to love as long as life lasts, to be wroth but for a moment, to make sacrifices without reserve?’ The might of fate is admitted:

c18.s4.14

*çaçidivākarayor grahapīḍanam: gajabhujaṅgamayor api bandhanam*
*matimatāṁ ca nirīkṣya daridratām: vidhir aho balavān iti me matiḥ.*

c18.s4.15

‘When I contemplate the eclipsing of sun and moon, the taking alive of elephants and snakes, and the poverty of the wise, I recognize the might of fate.’ The folly of accepting bad advice is expressed in a stanza which effectively matches sound and sense:

c18.s4.16

*narādhipā nīcamatānuvartino: budhopadiṣṭena pathā na yānti ye*
*viçanti te durgamamārganirgamam: samastasambādham anarthapañjaram.*

c18.s4.17

‘Kings who obey the advice of the low and walk not in the path set by the wise enter a maze of misfortune, in which trouble arises upon trouble and whence no exit presents itself.’ The relation of fortune to master and minister is cleverly described in verse which has found its way into the *Mudrārākṣasa*:

c18.s4.18

*atyucchrite mantriṇi pārthive ca: viṣṭabhya pādāv upatiṣṭhate çrīḥ*
*sā strīsvabhāvād asahā bharasya: tayor dvayor ekataraṁ jahāti.*

c18.s4.19

‘When a minister and a king have become too elevated, fortune, planting firm her feet, strives to support them, but unable to bear the burden as being a woman she deserts one or other of the two.’ There is a fine eulogy of right:

c18.s4.20

*eka eva suhṛd dharmo nidhane 'py anuyāti yaḥ*
*çarīreṇa samaṁ nāçaṁ sarvam anyad dhi gacchati.*

c18.s4.21

‘Righteousness is the one friend who accompanieth man even in death, for all the rest perisheth together with the body.’ The limits of possibility are asserted:

c18.s4.22

*yad açakyaṁ na tac chakyaṁ yac chakyaṁ çakyam eva tat*
*odake çakaṭaṁ yāti na nāvā gamyate sthale.*

c18.s4.23

‘What is impossible is not possible, what is possible that indeed is possible; the cart cannot go on sea, nor the ship on dry land.’

c18.s4.24

A more elaborate style is not rare, as in the description of the sufferings of the Pāṇḍavas at Virāṭa’s court, including the fate of Draupadī:

c18.s4.25

*rūpeṇāpratimena yauvanaguṇair vaṅçe çubhe janmanā*
*yuktā çrīr iva yā tayā vidhivaçāt kālakramāyātayā*
*sairandhrīti sagarvitaṁ yuvatibhiḥ sākṣepam ājñaptayā*
*Draupadyā nanu Matsyarājabhavane ghṛṣṭaṁ ciraṁ candanam.*

c18.s4.26

‘Draupadī, like Çrī herself, had peerless beauty, youthful grace, birth in a noble house; yet by decree of fate the passage of time brought her to such a pass that for many a day she had to pound sandal in the palace of the Matsya king at the haughty bidding of maidens who insolently called her handmaid.’

Cites (5)