A History of Sanskrit Literature c19.s1.14

c19.s1.14

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.