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A History of Sanskrit Literature c19.s1: 1. Guṇāḍhya and the Bṛhatkathā

A History of Sanskrit Literature c19.s1

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English

1. Guṇāḍhya and the Bṛhatkathā

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THERE is no doubt that one of our really serious losses in Indian literature is the disappearance of the *Bṛhatkathā* of Guṇāḍhya,¹ a work which ranked beside the *Mahābhārata* and the *Rāmāyaṇa* as one of the great storehouses of Indian literary art. Its existence is asserted first definitely by name in the seventh century when Subandhu, Bāṇa in both his romances, and Daṇḍin in his *Kāvyādarça* attest its fundamental importance. Later references are not rare; we have both the text and the comment of the *Daçarūpa* of Dhanaṁjaya as evidence of its existence, it is mentioned by Trivikrama in his *Campū*, and by Somadeva Sūri in his *Yaçastilaka*, both works of kindred type, while Govardhana celebrates it in his *Saptaçatī*. A Cambodian inscription (*c.* 875) expressly mentions Guṇāḍhya and his aversion to Prākrit, and we cannot doubt for a moment the existence before A. D. 600 of a romantic work by Guṇāḍhya.

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¹ F. Lacôte, *Essai sur Guṇāḍhya et la Bṛhatkathā* (1908).

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Of his personality we have an account, reproduced with little variation in three Kashmirian sources, the *Bṛhatkathāmañjarī* of Kṣemendra, the *Kathāsaritsāgara* of Somadeva, and the *Haracaritacintāmaṇi* of Jayaratha. Çiva one day, asked by Pārvatī for a new tale, related to her the substance of the *Bṛhatkathā*, *inter alia*. A Gaṇa Puṣpadanta overhearing it told it to his wife Jayā, who repeated it to Pārvatī. She in great anger cursed Puṣpadanta to lose his rank, which he was not to regain until he had met and related to a Yakṣa Kāṇabhūti the tale he had overheard, the Yakṣa being another unfortunate under a curse. Further, Mālyavant, a comrade of Puṣpadanta who had intervened to intercede for him, was cursed to leave heaven until he should have met and heard from Kāṇabhūti the tale. In course of time Puṣpadanta was born as Vararuci-Kātyāyana at Kauçāmbī; becoming the minister of Nanda, he finally retired to the Vindhya and there told to Kāṇabhūti the tale of the seven emperors of the Vidyādharas, and attained release. Guṇāḍhya meantime had been born at Pratiṣṭhita or Pratiṣṭhāna on the Godāvarī as a reincarnation of Mālyavant; he is in high favour with Sātavāhana, but the latter suffers a severe mortification when during the water play with his wives he is told by his queen not to throw any more on her (*modakaiḥ*), which he in his ignorance of the laws of verbal combination misunderstands as a request to be pelted with sweetmeats—an appalling request if the ancient Indian sweets were like the modern. Dejected, he refuses to be comforted unless he can learn Sanskrit. Guṇāḍhya offers to teach him in six years, but when Çarvavarman the author of the *Kātantra* laughs at this offer, and suggests that he can do it in six months, Guṇāḍhya vows to use neither Sanskrit, Prākrit, nor the vernacular if the deed is done. It is accomplished and Guṇāḍhya wanders disconsolate in the Vindhya, where Kāṇabhūti meets him and relates the tales learned from Vararuci. Guṇāḍhya would record them, but must write in Paiçācī, the language of the goblins, as he is debarred from use of any other speech by his vow. His disciples take the vast work to the king Sātavāhana, who rejects it. Guṇāḍhya recites it to the beasts and birds, burning the manuscript as he proceeds; the beasts, intent on the sweet poetry, become thin, and the cooks in the royal kitchen no longer serve good soup. Hence the marvel is revealed and the king saves one-seventh of the 700,000 Çlokas of the original, the tale preserved in the *Bṛhatkathā*. The Nepalese version contained in the *Nepālamāhātmya* is different. We hear nothing of Vararuci-Kātyāyana, there is but one sinner Bhṛṅgin who enters the private room of Çiva and Pārvatī in bee form; he is reborn at Mathurā as Guṇāḍhya, becomes a Paṇḍit of king Madana of Ujjain, is vanquished by Çarvavarman, and is advised to write in Paiçācī by a seer Pulastya. Nothing is said of the pledge as to language, naturally enough, for Nepal lay outside the interest on this point of India proper.

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The legend seems to have been known already in some form to Bāṇa, and therefore must be moderately old; how far and in what form it goes back to Guṇāḍhya, it is idle to say. The location of Guṇāḍhya is clearly different in the two sources, for it is vain to seek to make out that there has been confusion between Pratiṣṭhāna on the Godāvarī and a place of like name at the junction of the Ganges and the Yamunā. What is clear is that Ujjain or Kauçāmbī was the scene whence Guṇāḍhya derived much of his inspiration, which is a very different thing from the place where he was in royal honour and composed his work. The cennexion with Sātavāhana, which the Kashmirian recensions suggest, is borne out to some extent by certain facts. In the first place, the Sātavāhanas were at one time patrons of Prākrit as opposed to Sanskrit literature; the evidence of the inscriptions¹ shows that Sanskrit was used by their Kṣatrapa rivals before they adopted it, and the Māhārāṣṭrī lyric flourished under them. Secondly, the mention of the study of Sanskrit in this connexion does suggest that there was a tradition regarding the time when the Sātavāhanas determined to copy the Kṣatrapas and Sanskrit became popular in court. Further we cannot go.

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¹ Bloch, *Mélanges Lévi*, pp. 15 f.; Lévi, JA. 1902, i. 109 ff.

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Nor can we say anything definite of the date of Guṇāḍhya. The connexion with the Sātavāhanas after all means nothing definite even if real, and the most important evidence we could have would be a clear² allusion in literature to, or employment of, the *Bṛhatkathā* before Daṇḍin or Bāṇa. It may be³ that Bhāsa's dramas drew some inspiration from this source, but we have no strict proof. We can fairly claim that Guṇāḍhya is not later than A. D. 500, but to place him in the first century A. D. is quite conjectural, nor in reality is any other later date more assured.

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² The supposed Tamil version of the 2nd cent. A. D. (S. K. Aiyangar, *Ancient India*, pp. 328, 337) is too dubious in date to be evidence. The alleged version into Sanskrit by Durvinīta (? 6th cent.) is quite dubious (R. Narasimhachar, JRAS. 1913, pp. 389 f.); see Fleet, JRAS. 1911, pp. 186-8.

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³ Denied by Hertel, *Pāla und Gopāla*, pp. 153 f.; cf. P. D. Gune, *Ann. Bhand. Inst.*, ii. 1 ff.

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Obscure also is the question of the form of the work. The Kashmirian version suggests that what Guṇāḍhya produced was a work in Çlokas, but that may be quite misleading, and on the other hand we have the express statement of Daṇḍin that a Kathā to which type he refers the *Bṛhatkathā* was written in prose. Verses may have been interwoven as in the case of the *Jātakamālā*, but this must remain a mere hypothesis, and there is no other evidence to invalidate the impression given by Daṇḍin. A prose citation by Hemacandra may conceivably be from the *Bṛhatkathā*, but it would be quite idle to assert that it was; it may have come from a later recension or from some other source.

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The dialect used was Paiçācī, and over this term a controversy has raged, accentuated by the fact that we really cannot be sure that we have a single relic of the *Bṛhatkathā*, still less that so late a grammarian as Mārkaṇḍeya (17th cent.) actually¹ had the text before him. A further confusion has arisen from Sir G. Grierson's decision to group a certain number of north-western dialects, spoken in Kafiristan, the Swat valley, Chitral, and Gilgit, as Piçāca languages, claiming both that they have a true relation to the ancient Paiçācī dialect, and were so called because the speakers were cannibals, and thus styled Piçācas, eaters of raw flesh, by their neighbours. The assertions of the grammarians are confused and unsatisfactory, nor is the matter improved by the existence of two schools of Prākrit grammar with divergent traditions and views, especially as these are represented by comparatively late texts. But, as we have seen, there is more probability that Paiçācī was a dialect rather of the Vindhyas than of the north-west; the hardening of *d* to *t* or of other soft letters is not, as Grierson's theory requires to make it plausible, solely a feature of the north-west, but occurs in other dialects including Pāli, and the fact that Paiçācī has but one sibilant prejudices its claim to be akin to the north-west dialects which in Açoka's time and later preserve distinctions.² Lacôte, however, while accepting connexion with the north-west, agrees with the view that the phenomenon of hardening is a sign of the use of an Aryan speech among a non-Aryan people, and holds that Guṇāḍhya adapted this dialect to literary purposes, avoiding any too serious deviations from Sanskrit, and, if we substitute a Vindhyan dialect spoken in a Dravidian area, we probably approach the truth. At least for the connexion with the Vindhya we have the clear assertions of the Kashmirian recension, which had no special motive for misrepresentation of the facts, and the testimony of Rājaçekhara¹ is clear in favour of the actual use of Paiçācī in a wide region, including the Vindhya area. This view is much more plausible than Lacôte's suggestion that Guṇāḍhya picked up the idea of the dialect from some visitors from the north-west, his sphere of work lying round Kauçāmbī and Ujjain, and Grierson admits that, even if originally a north-western dialect, Paiçācī might have been carried to the Vindhya.

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¹ As Grierson asserts, AMJV. i. 121; JRAS. 1913, p. 391. All that is said is *Bṛhatkathāyām*, and common sense forbids us to assume that Mārkaṇḍeya used it, or that the quotation is really from Guṇāḍhya's own text and not, for instance, the Kashmirian version.

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² Chap. i, § 4.

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¹ *Kāvyamīmāṅsā*, p. 51.

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It is impossible to determine with precision the content of the *Bṛhatkathā*; our sources are too slight, but we can gather a general impression of the task accomplished by Guṇāḍhya. The sources on which he drew were, it is clear, three in number. The *Rāmāyaṇa* gave him the *motif* of the search of a husband for a wife cruelly stolen from him soon after a happy marriage; from Buddhist legends and other traditions of Ujjain and Kauçāmbī he was deeply familiar with the tales of Pradyota or Mahāsena and the gallant and dashing hero Udayana,² whose love-adventures were famed for their number and variety; he was also in touch with the many tales of sea-voyages and strange adventures in far lands which were current in the busy centres of Indian trade, and with the abundant fairy-tales and legends of magic current in India. From the latter source and from Buddhist legend he derived the conception of the emperor, Cakravartin, who is the secular counterpart of the Buddha; Naravāhanadatta, his hero, is born with the thirty-two auspicious signs which assure him Buddhahood if he enter the ascetic life, universal dominion if he remain in the affairs of the world. But the empire is not of this earth; it is essentially a fairy land, the realm of the Vidyādharas, who dwell beyond the formidable defences of the Himālayas and who by reason of their magic powers have semi-divine attributes. The Vidyādharas do not appear early in Indian religion, but we can recognize easily enough in them a contamination of the old ideas of the Gandharvas with notions derived from the mysterious powers of Hindu seers and ascetics and Buddhist saints. The hero is a son of Udayana, and in effect is Udayana revised and remodelled for his new destiny, while the *Rāmāyaṇa* lends the decisive element of the plot, the rape of Madanamañcukā or Madanamañjukā by Mānasavega, and the efforts of her husband to discover her, in which he has the aid of his faithful minister Gomukha. His success is accomplished simultaneously with his winning the empire of the Vidyādharas, just as the recovery of Sītā is followed forthwith by the royal consecration of Rāma. But there must have been a vital difference in the tales, for Guṇāḍhya clearly was the poet not of kings so much as of the merchants,¹ the traders, the seafarers, and even the handicraftsmen of his day; his epic was a bourgeois epic, and in lieu of the stainless purity of Rāma we have as hero a son of Udayana, even lighter in love, despite his affection for Madanamañcukā, than his father. Hence we find that certainly even in the original there must have been much said of Naravāhanadatta's other loves and many a tale of adventurous journeying as well as Märchen and fairy lore. In Gomukha we have a picture of a minister such as is Yaugandharāyaṇa in the dramas of Bhāsa, bold, energetic, courageous, if slightly devious in modern views as regards choice of expedients. The portrait of Madanamañcukā was clearly definite; she was, like Vasantasenā in the *Cārudatta* of Bhāsa and still more clearly in the *Mṛcchakaṭikā*, a hetaira who hated her position, and whose great aim was to be recognized as a woman of family (*kulastrī*), and thus be permitted legitimate marriage in lieu of compulsory polyandry. We have here perhaps a valuable chronological hint, if we could be sure that it was from the *Bṛhatkathā* that Bhāsa really drew the picture. It is striking at least, however, that the description of the eight courts and the garden of the palace of Vasantasenā in the *Mṛcchakaṭikā*, but not in the *Cārudatta*, should correspond minutely with the description of the place of Kaliṅgasenā given in the *Bṛhatkathāçlokasaṁgraha* of Budhasvāmin.

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² Cf. Przyluski, *La légende de l'empereur Açoka*, pp. 74 ff.; J. Hertel, BSGW. lxix. 4 (1917); Lacôte, *JA.* 1919, i. 493 ff.; P. D. Gune, *Ann. Bhand. Inst.*, ii. 1 ff.; Burlingame, HOS. xxviii. 51, 62 f., 247-93.

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¹ Cf. Foucher, *L'Art Gréco-Bouddhique du Gandhāra*, ii. 102 ff.

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Guṇāḍhya's influence is seen also in Daṇḍin who borrowed from him, we may fairly assume, the conception of placing his kings' sons, fallen in station by the action of misfortune among vagabonds, in positions where a series of adventures drawn from low life is allied to marvellous happenings of every kind. The arrangement indeed of the story may be due to the same cause, for it resembles the scene in which Naravāhanadatta and his friends, reunited after separation, recount their adventures to one another. The fantasy of Guṇāḍhya lives on also in the *Yaçastilaka* of Somadeva Sūri and in the *Tilakamañjarī* of Dhanapāla, both of whom recognize the importance of Guṇāḍhya.¹ Moreover, the name of his hero seems from his use of it to have won acceptance in royal usage as a suitable title for a prince as well as in literature. But his enduring memorial is furnished by the versions of the *Bṛhatkathā* which have reached us.

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¹ The degree of his originality may, of course, be questioned, and no poet is without some predecessor; but his success points to a very real creative power, which permits us justly to ascribe to him the creation of the genre.

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