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A History of Sanskrit Literature c18.s6: 6. The Hitopadeça

A History of Sanskrit Literature c18.s6

Language
English

6. The Hitopadeça

c18.s6.1

Of the various descendants of the *Pañcatantra* the *Hitopadeça*¹ reigns in Bengal. The author gives his name as Nārāyaṇa, whose patron was Dhavalacandra, and, as one manuscript of the work is dated 1373, must have lived before then. His mention of the term Sunday, Bhaṭṭārakavāra, as a day when work should not be done is against an early date, as not until about 900 is the use of this terminology customary;² otherwise it is only certain that he is later than Māgha and Kāmandaki. That he wrote in Bengal is made probable by the tale in which he describes the worship of Gaurī as involving sexual relations with the wife of another man as part of the ritual, a practice notoriously approved by the Tāntrikas of Bengal. His purpose is given frankly as instruction in conduct and in Sanskrit, and his sources are stated to be the *Pañcatantra* and another anonymous book. The political interest of the *Pañcatantra* is fully maintained, for, though Nārāyaṇa adds much, he is specially fond of bringing together large selections from the *Kāmandakīya Nītisāra*. The other book, however, is not this text, but evidently some book of stories, for Nārāyaṇa has many new tales. Of the seventeen not found in other versions seven are fables, three Märchen, five tales of intrigue, and two edifying stories. Of these, one telling of the loyal Vīravara who is willing to sacrifice himself and his family to Çivā to benefit his master, taken in conjunction with the reference to the worship of Gaurī alluded to above, and the fact that each book closes with a benediction invoking Çiva's favour, shows that the writer was a Çaiva, not, as his name would suggest, an adorer of Viṣṇu.

c18.s6.2

¹ Ed. A. W. von Schlegel and C. Lassen (1829–31); P. Peterson, BSS. 33, 1887.

c18.s6.3

² Fleet, JRAS. 1912, pp. 1039–46.

c18.s6.4

From this *Pañcatantra* Nārāyaṇa derived the inversion of Books i and ii, so that the work starts with the winning of friends and then advances to their loss. But in Books iii and iv he went his own way; Book iii of the original he divided into two, the first being War, the second Peace, obviously as a pendant to the pair of opposites already contained in Books i and ii. His new Book iv was composed by inventing a new frame story, and placing in it part of the stories of the original Book iii. Further, Book v of the original was divided between Books iii and iv. Book iv of the original was wholly dropped, and several stories from Book i were placed in the new Book iv. Moreover, various tales of the original were simply omitted and new ones inserted in all four books, with the result that perhaps two-fifths of the original prose and a third of the verses are found. The sources of the new matter are obscure. The tale of the mouse which a pious hermit changed into a cat, a dog, and a tiger successively, but reduced it to its original form when it sought to destroy its benefactor, is perhaps merely a revised edition of a similar anecdote in the *Mahābhārata* regarding a dog. The tale (ii. 6) of the woman who carried on an intrigue with the son of the local headman, and who was clever enough to save them both from the lad’s father and her own spouse, has its original home in the *Çukasaptati*, that of Vīravara, perhaps, in the *Vetālapañcaviñçatikā*. It itself has been rendered into several vernaculars besides Bengālī.

c18.s6.5

Nārāyaṇa’s style, as intended for instruction in Sanskrit, is simple and normally satisfactorily easy; the chief difficulties occur in the verses which he took over. A considerable number of the stanzas are probably his own work, and if so he deserves considerable credit for fluent versification. Artistically, no doubt, the massing of verses is an error, but he shares the mistake with the author of the Simplicior. His language is distinctly rendered more monotonous by the devotion to passive constructions and the avoidance of any rare or difficult verbal forms or of unusual syntactical constructions. It is, therefore, surprising to find in him one stanza of unique construction:

c18.s6.6

*saṃlāpitānāṁ madhurair vacobhir: mithyopacāraiç ca vaçīkṛtānām*
*āçāvatāṁ çraddadhatāṁ ca loke: kim arthināṁ vañcayitavyam asti?*

c18.s6.7

‘Is it right to deceive the needy, with whom one has conversed in honeyed words and whom one has reduced into one’s power by false contrivances, at the very moment when their faith and hopes are set on one?’ The nominal use of the gerundive is decidedly a sign of a decline in feeling for grammar. The maxims are often happily framed:

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*martavyaṁ iti yad duḥkham puruṣasyopajāyate*

c18.s6.9

*çakyas tenānumānena paro ’pi parirakṣitum.*

c18.s6.10

‘If one but think of the sorrow that springs up in a man at the thought of death, then one would guard even a foe from that fate.’ Distrust appearances:

c18.s6.11

*na dharmaçāstram paṭhatīti kāraṇaṁ: na cāpi vedādhyayanaṁ durātmanaḥ*

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*svabhāva evātra tathātiricyate: yathā prakṛtyā madhuraṁ gavāṁ payaḥ.*

c18.s6.13

‘It is no justification for trusting an evil man that he recites the text-book on duty or studies the Veda; the innate nature always triumphs, as inevitably as milk is sweet.’

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