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A History of Sanskrit Literature c19.s5: 5. Somadeva's Kathāsaritsāgara

A History of Sanskrit Literature c19.s5

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English

5. Somadeva's Kathāsaritsāgara

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Somadeva, a Brahmin of Kashmir, son of Rāma, wrote the *Kathāsaritsāgara*¹ between 1063 and 1081 in order to divert the troubled mind of Sūryamatī, a princess of Jalandhara, wife of Ananta and mother of Kalaça, his work falling, therefore, a considerable period after that of Kṣemendra. In addition to the division into Lambhakas Somadeva has one of his own composition into Taraṅgas, 124 in all, the name, ‘billows’, being chosen obviously in relation to the title of the work, which is most naturally analysed as ‘Ocean of the Rivers of Stories’, rather than with Lacôte as ‘(Bṛhat-) Kathā, an Ocean of Rivers (of Stories)’. These divisions are not original; Kṣemendra, indeed, has subdivisions for some of the longer books which he calls Gucchas, ‘clusters’, in the older manner. Kalhaṇa apparently was influenced in his choice of title for his chronicle by Somadeva.

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¹ Ed. Durgāprasād, NSP. 1903; trans. C. H. Tawney, BI. 1880–4. Cf. J. S. Speyer, *Studies about the Kathāsaritsāgara* (1908).

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Somadeva sets out by telling his purpose, and one stanza of his has caused trouble, evoking different renderings from Hall, Lévi, Tawney, Speyer, and Lacôte:

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*aucityānvayarakṣā ca yathāçakti vidhīyate*
*kathārasāvighātena kāvyāṅçasya ca yojanā.*

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The sense of this stanza appears to me clear: ‘Literary convention and the connexion of topics have been presented as best I could, as well as the arrangement of a part of the poem so as not to offend against the sentiment of the story (or the story and its sentiment).’ We have, it seems, a recognition of the fact that there has been change of order, and that it was made in order to preserve the sentiment in the tale. This accords exactly with what we find in the arrangement. In the first five books there is no change. But for the rest Somadeva was dominated by his desire to preserve the effect of the poem, and obviously this compelled the breach of the gap between Pañca and Mahābhiṣeka; in his text the transition is perfect; the former book ends with the decision of the prince to obtain the jewels necessary for the coronation of a would-be emperor, and the next book carries on the proposal, though in a slightly casual manner which Somadeva has not altogether obliterated. This left him, however, with three books to fit in, Ratnaprabhā, Alaṁkāravatī, and Çaktiyaças, and obviously necessitated a complete overhauling of the earlier part of the poem in order not to overburden it. The solution adopted was to fit these three books, which all deal with adventures of the prince before he became emperor, in the space before Pañca and to eliminate from the earlier matter two books, which could, as not dealing with the hero's own adventures but merely being stories told to him, be fitted in as an appendix, that is the books Padmāvatī and Viṣamaçīla. The arrangement of the material before Pañca is carried out artistically in so far as an effort is made to interpose books mainly episodic with those giving important if incidental acts of the hero. Thus after the fifth book which is episodic we have the important book Madanamañcukā (vi); this is followed by the Ratnaprabhā (vii); the Sūryaprabha (viii), which intervenes before Alaṁkāravatī (ix), is essentially merely episodic; Çaktiyaças (x) runs naturally on from Alaṁkāravatī as containing incidental stories; then follow Velā (xi), Çaçāṅkavatī (xii), Madirāvatī (xiii), the all-important Pañca and Mahābhiṣeka (xiv and xv), and, by way of appendix, Suratamañjarī, Padmāvatī, and Viṣamaçīla (xvi–xviii). One change in the actual contents of a book was necessary. In Kṣemendra and probably in the original Velā was not merely episodic; it contained at the close the vital element of the disappearance of Madanamañcukā, which explains the grief of the king alluded to in the following books. Nothing of this sort accorded with Somadeva's plan of working in the books Ratnaprabhā, Alaṁkāravatī, and Çaktiyaças, and therefore the allusion had to disappear, although it was not possible for Somadeva to avoid leaving occasional traces in the books before Pañca in his order that Madanamañcukā had already been lost.

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We may admit at once that despite his efforts Somadeva has not succeeded in producing a unified work. But the merit of the *Kathāsaritsāgara* does not rest on construction. It stands on the solid fact that Somadeva has presented in an attractive and elegant if simple and unpretentious form a very large number of stories which have for us a very varied appeal, either as amusing or gruesome or romantic or as appealing to our love of wonders on sea and land, or as affording parallels to tales familiar from childhood. Kṣemendra’s example shows how, by undue condensation and obscurity, tales can lose all point and interest; Somadeva, how by care the point can be fully expressed without fatigue to the reader. We meet with the old but still amusing tales of fools, scattered in the *Kathāsaritsāgara* among the tales of its version of the *Pañcatantra*, but collected together after it by Kṣemendra; chance proves that half at least go back to a collection made before A. D. 450, used in a work by a monk Ārya Saṅghasena, and rendered into Chinese by his pupil Guṇavṛddhi in 492.¹ We hear once more of the foolish servants who, bidden protect the leather of the new trunks, take out the clothes in them and thus protect them against the rain, of the fool who insists that his father never violated chastity and that he must have been a mind-born son, of the fellow who filled himself with seven cakes and then bitterly lamented that he had not eaten the seventh first and saved the rest, and we may, if young enough, still laugh with the stones at these japes. Rogues who prosper lend another series of tales; one is ingenious; dressed as a rich merchant, he craved an interview with the king, to whom he promised for the honour of a daily repetition of the audience a gift each time of 500 *dīnāras*; the king accedes, and the courtiers, thinking that he is all-powerful with their master, bribe him until he has fifty million gold pieces, which he has the good sense to share with the king to whom he reveals his effective ruse. Much is told also of the thief, gambler, roué, but always brilliant Mūladeva,² who is in Indian literature the *beau idéal* of a perfect cheat but who has a son even wilier than himself. Another rascal is so clever that we may forgive him his evil deeds; he is to suffer after death an age in hell by reason of his misdeeds, but a single gift to a pious person entitles him to one day’s life as Indra. Of this he takes opportunity to gather all his friends and to traverse with them the sacred places of India, thus acquiring such merit as to remain Indra. But yet this god also is lightly treated; still more often are religious ascetics denounced; one of them who in order to get into his possession a pretty girl frightens her father into exposing her in a chest Danaë-like, finds the wrong chest, and has his nose and ears bitten off by an ape, while the girl is rescued by a prince.

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¹ Hertel, *Ein altindisches Narrenbuch*, BSGW. 64, 1912. Cf. the story of the foolish monkeys (Jāt. 46 and a Bharhut scene, GIL. ii. 108).

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² PAPS. lii (1913).

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A book of tales about women seems to have been used by the compilers of the Kashmir recension, to judge from the mass of stories, unhappily often to their disadvantage; we hear of murderous women, of one who mutilates her husband in revenge for a beating, of one who regularly betrays him but insists on burning herself on his pyre, of the woman who got rid of ten husbands, and apparently met her match in the man who had disposed of ten wives, but defeated him also and became so unpleasantly notorious that she turned into an ascetic. Full of reminiscences of various Märchen *motifs* is the tale of the king whose white elephant can be healed only by the touch of a chaste woman; none of 80,000 in the kingdom can help it, until a poor young wife succeeds; the king marries her sister, immures her in a palace, and is after all betrayed. But Somadeva gives us also tales of faith and truth among women. Devasmitā revenges herself on her would-be lovers by giving them assignations, but merely in order to brand them; charming is the picture of an Indian Philemon and Baukis.¹ It is death to tell another what one has remembered of existence in a former birth; nevertheless the queen of Dharmadatta and her husband are alike seized with the feeling that they must tell each other of their suddenly aroused memories. The story is pretty; the lady was a faithful servant in the house of a Brahmin, while her husband was the loyal retainer of a merchant; they lived together in poverty, eating the little they had over when gods, ancestors, and guests had taken their share. In time of famine a Brahmin comes, the husband gives him the little they had, and then his life leaves him, indignant that he had preferred the Brahmin to himself. His wife follows him in death, and the same fate again meets them when they have exchanged these memories of a faithful love.

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¹ J. S. Speyer, *Die indische Theosophie*, pp. 97 .

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The religious world of Somadeva reminds us of the superstitious nature of the people of Kashmir; we can hardly doubt that the Kashmir recension added readily anything that seemed interesting in this regard, even if Somadeva himself is rather inclined to rationalizing Märchen. Çiva and Pārvatī in her dread forms are the great deities, though Viṣṇu inevitably appears in the episode of Naravāhana's visit to the Çvetadvīpa. Human offerings are specially frequent, the Pulindas, the Bhillas, are regarded as ever on the outlook for victims for the goddess to whom Jīmūtavāhana is prepared to offer homage before his act of self-sacrifice. Witchcraft is taken as a matter of course, and many details are given of the dreadful deeds of the witches and of the horrible scenes enacted nightly at the places where the dead are burned or flung out as prey for beasts, birds, and the ghouls who haunt these cemeteries; in his eeriness of description Somadeva is a match for the author of the *Mālatīmādhava*. Buddhistic traits are not rare, though only sporadic; it must be remembered that, as we know from Kalhaṇa, Buddhism had in a degraded form a strong hold in Kashmir. A number of tales are told to relate the action of Karman in determining man’s life; we have a legend of a prince who tears out an eye because women loved so deeply his beauty, a parallel to the *Mittavindaka Jātaka*, and the legend of Jīmūtavāhana, though the Buddhist origin of that has been questioned.¹ The *Vetālapañcaviñçatikā* legends show distinct Buddhist traits. On the other hand, we have frequent mention of the worship of the Liṅga, Çiva’s phallic symbol, and of the Mothers, and popular superstition is everywhere abundant. The gods and minor spirits mingle freely in ordinary life, innumerable apparent mortals are merely beings driven from heaven by curses who can be restored to their former estate by some act of cruelty or kindness. The love of the marvellous is fully satisfied by tales of adventures at sea, with shipwrecks and subterranean palaces, or not less marvellous wanderings on land to strange places like camphor-land where princesses can easily be won. The loves of Naravāhanadatta are too numerous and too inevitable—for they are all fore-ordained even if we are only told so at the end—to be exciting, but there are many others recounted in episodes, and a picture or a dream often proves the starting-point for a deep if transient affection. Nor can we ignore the interest lent by the inclusion of effective versions of the Vetāla cycle, of the *Pañcatantra*, of anecdotes of Vikramāditya, as well as those in the less satisfactory book Padmāvatī.

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¹ Bosch, *De legende van Jīmūtavāhana*, pp. viii, 143 ff.

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Somadeva's taste is shown by the fact that, though he likes to conclude a tale with a different metre, only 761 of his 21,388 verses are in more elaborate metres, and he resists the temptation to indulge himself in word-plays, contenting himself with the swift easy flow of the simple narrative. He permits himself in his metre a certain lightness of touch exhibited in minor negligences, which in no way make it inaccurate, but save it from the pedantry of following in absolute strictness the rules regarding caesuras and Sandhi rigorously adopted by the great Kāvya writers. His abnegation is the more remarkable because he obviously could have won repute as a poet in the elaborate style. As it is, we owe him many happy passages in which simplicity is not inconsistent with ornament. Thus we have the description, brief but effective, of a storm at sea:

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*aho vāyur apūrvo 'yam ity āçcaryavaçād iva*
*vyāghūrṇante sma jaladhes taṭeṣu vanarājayaḥ.*
*vyatyastāç ca muhur vātād adharottaratāṁ yayuḥ*
*vāridher vārinicayā bhāvāḥ kālakramād iva.*

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'The forests on the banks of the sea shook to and fro as though amazed at the wondrous force of the gale, and inverted by the wind the waves went up and down as do men's hopes through the force of fate.' The good deed of the Gandharva, who saves the prince from the well into which he had fallen, is summed up in an admirable line:

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*parārthaphalajanmāno na syur mārgadrumā iva*
*tapacchido mahāntaç cej jīrṇāraṇyaṁ jagad bhavet.*

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'Were there not high-souled men born to do good to others, like wayside trees which dispel the heat, this world were nothing but a worn-out forest.' There is a very pathetic picture of the death of Çūrasena; he was a Rājput and had to obey his king's summons, despite his love for his wife Suṣeṇā; she awaits his promised return and, when he comes not, her breath leaves her body as if consumed by the forest fire of love. Her husband meantime, scarce able to leave his lord, is hastening to her on a swift camel:

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*tatrāpaçyad gataprāṇāṁ priyāṁ tāṁ kṛtamaṇḍanām*
*latām utphullakusumāṁ vātenonmūlitām iva.*
*dṛṣṭvaiva vihvalasyaitāṁ kurvato ’ṅge viniryayuḥ*
*pralāpaiḥ saha tasyāpi prāṇā virahiṇaḥ kṣaṇāt.*

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‘There saw he his wife lying dead in all her finery like a creeper in full bloom that the wind hath uprooted; seeing her he grasped her in his arms, beside himself with grief of separation, and his breath straightway departed with his lamentations.’ There is a brilliant description of summer:

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*bhrāmyataç ca jagāmāsya bhīmo grīṣmartukesarī*
*pracaṇḍādityavadano dīptatadraçmikesaraḥ.*
*priyāvirahasaṁtaptapānthanihçvāsamārutaiḥ*
*nyastoṣmāṇa ivātyuṣṇā vānti sma ca sakīraṇāḥ.*
*çusyadvidīrṇapaṅkāç ca hṛdayaiḥ sphuṭitair iva*
*jalāçayā dadṛçire gharmaluptāmbusampadaḥ.*
*cīrīcītkāramukharās tāpamlānadaladharāḥ*
*madhuçrīvirahān mārgeṣv arudann iva pādapāḥ.*

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‘And as he wandered there came on him the dread hot season in lion shape with the blazing sun for mouth and his fiery rays for mane. The winds blew with cruel heat as though warmed by the dolorous sighs of travellers parted from their loved ones. The tanks, their waters wasted by the heat, with their drying white mud seemed to show their broken hearts. The trees bewailed the departure of the glory of spring with the shrill moaning of their bark, their lips of leaves being parched by the heat.’

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