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A History of Sanskrit Literature c20: XIII. The Romantic and the Didactic Tale

A History of Sanskrit Literature c20

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XIII. The Romantic and the Didactic Tale

1. The Romantic Tale

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THE fame of the *Bṛhatkathā* has resulted in comparatively few other tales being preserved in works of early date. The *Vetālapañcaviṃçatikā* was doubtless originally part of a distinct cycle, but it is preserved for us in its oldest form in Kṣemendra's *Bṛhatkathāmañjarī*¹ and Somadeva's *Kathāsaritsāgara*.² We have several other recensions, of which that of Çivadāsa³ is in prose and verse, which may represent the original form of the tales, though that is mere speculation, and a verse original has been claimed.⁴ One recension of an anonymous author⁵ is no more than a prose version based on Kṣemendra, and Kṣemendra's verses have here and there found their way into the codices of Çivadāsa. The late recension of Jambhaladatta⁶ has no verse maxims, and it has been suggested that its form of the tales is in some respects older than that shown by the other recensions, but this is by no means clear. An abbreviated version by Vallabhadāsa⁷ is also known, and the text has been freely rendered into modern Indian vernaculars and also exists in the Mongolian Ssiddi-Kür.

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¹ ix. 2. 19 ff.

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² lxxv–xcix.

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³ Ed. H. Uhle, AKM. viii. 1, 1914.

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⁴ Bosch, *De legende van Jīmūtavāhana*, pp. 22 ff.

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⁵ Ed. AKM. viii. 1; another version (MS. 1487 A. D.), BSGW. 66, 1914.

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⁶ Ed. Calcutta, 1873.

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⁷ Eggeling, IOC. i. 1564 f.

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Trivikramasena, or as the later accounts have it Vikramāditya, is in receipt annually of a fruit from an ascetic, which he hands over to his treasurer, until accidentally he finds that each contains a jewel. In gratitude he offers aid to the ascetic who asks him to go to a cemetery and bring down from a tree a corpse which is on it. The king agrees to act, but is startled to find that a ghoul, Vetāla, has taken up its abode in the corpse, yet persists in his purpose. The corpse denizen, however, lightens the way by telling a story ending in a question as to the answer to a riddle, and on the king solving it the corpse falls off and returns to its original place. The king, however, finally is defeated, and is silent. The demon then reveals to him that the evil ascetic is seeking in reality to slay him, and at his bidding the king asks the ascetic to show him how to perform the prostration required in the rite which is to be performed with the corpse, and hews off the evil-doer's head. The stories have often much spirit and point; the king is silenced by the question of the relationship *inter se* of the children of a father who marries the daughter of a lady whom his son espouses. This weird tangle arose from rash vows and honour combined; the king and his son had seen the footprints of two ladies and the son induces his sire to marry the one with large, he the one with small feet, and it turned out that the mother was the *petite* beauty. Difficult again is the question how the hand of a girl should be disposed of, when she has been rescued from a demon by the united work of three lovers, one of whom finds by his skill the place where she is hidden, the other by magic provides an aerial car to seek for her, and the third by valour slays the demon; the king gives the palm to valour. Which again is the nobler, the husband-to-be who permits his beloved one a last assignation, the robber who lets her pass him unscathed when he knows her mission, or the lover who returns her unharmed when he learns of the husband's noble deed? A youth vows his head to Bhaṭṭārikā if he win a fair maid as wife; he pays his debt, his friend finds his corpse and imitates his deed, fearful of suspicion of murder; the wife finds the headless bodies, the goddess pities, and bids her restore the heads, but she errs. Which is her husband? The body with the true head, replies the king, for the head is the noblest member. Or we have the strange case of the son of a thief brought up by a Brahmin, adopted by a king, at whose offering to the spirits of the dead three hands appear to demand the sacrifice. Among these Märchen or novelettes there is one distinctly Buddhist tale, though Durgā is the chief figure in the book taken as a whole, which is distinctly a product of the spirit of the Tantras. A king desires a human sacrifice for his own benefit, parents and the Brahmin priest seek to carry it out, the demon is ready, but the little child to be offered laughs at their shameless folly in ignoring the transient nature of all earthly things, and his life is spared.

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Çivadāsa's recension cannot well date before the twelfth century and may be later. It contains not merely maxims in verse—often collected from well-known sources, including a verse of Rudra Bhaṭṭa—but also some narrative verse, and in so far approaches the style of the Campū. One fine stanza probably quoted¹ is worthy of citation:

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¹ Ascribed to Pāmpaka by Çrīdharadāsa, iv. 214.

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*no manye dṛḍhabandhanāt kṣatam idaṁ naivāṅkuçodghaṭṭanaṁ*
*skandhārohaṇatāḍanāt paribhavo naivānyadeçāgamaḥ*
*cintāṁ me janayanti cetasi yathā smṛtvā svayūthaṁ vane*
*siṁhatrāsitabhītabhītakalabhā yāsyanti kasyāçrayam.*

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'Not the wounds, I ween, that my body suffers from my tight bonds, nor the blows of my master's hook, nor the shame of bearing him on my shoulders and enduring his strokes, nor the loss of my home, bring such sorrow to my heart as the thought, "To whom can the young calves, terrified to death by the lion's onslaught, now have resort for aid?"' An ingenious alliteration is also pretty:

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*sa dhūrjaṭijaṭājūṭo jāyatāṁ vijayāya vaḥ*
*yatraikapalitabhrāntiṁ karoty adyāpi Jāhnavī.*

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'May Çiva's matted locks further your success, locks among which the Ganges' presence seems to place one white hair.'

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Interesting is the *Çukasaptati*,² seventy tales of a parrot, of which we have two recensions, both of uncertain date, but which was certainly known in some form to the Jain Hemacandra³ and doubtless existed long before it was finally reduced to the form in which we have it. The two recensions best known are the *ornatior* and *simplicior* of Schmidt. The latter is not the earlier; it is clearly an abbreviated version of a text something like the Ornatior, as is shown by the fact that it not rarely leaves us in the dark as to the precise point of the stories. The form of the original must probably have been simple prose, interspersed with gnomic verses and with some narrative verses at the beginning and end of each of the tales. The framework is amusing. Haradatta, a merchant, has a foolish son Madanasena who spends his whole time in love-passages with his young wife. His father is induced to give him the present of a parrot and a crow, wise birds, embodiments of Gandharvas, whose wise talk converts the son to virtue’s ways, so that when going on a journey he entrusts his young wife to them. She regrets his loss but is ready to find another to console her, and the advice of the crow merely meets with a threat to wring his neck. The wiser parrot approves her deed, provided she is smart enough if she finds herself in a hole to get out of it as cleverly as Guṇaçālinī did. The curiosity of the lady is aroused, and by telling her tales and asking her how one should act at the critical moment the bird maintains her virtue until her husband returns. The tales are hardly edifying; about half of them deal with breaches of the marriage bond, while the rest exhibit other instances of the cunning usually of hetairai or clever decisions of arbitrators, as when Mūladeva appears as asked to decide which of two hideous wives of demons is the better-looking. Two famous incidents contained in the collection are the judgement of Solomon and the parallel to the fabricated ordeal in Tristan and Isolde. As usual, religion plays its part in helping immorality; religious processions, temples, pilgrimages, marriages, sacrifices, all are convenient occasions for assignations, the fleeing lover is declared by the ingenious wife to be the ghost of the paternal ancestor, and so forth.

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² *Simplicior*, ed. AKM. x. 1, 1897; trans. Kiel, 1894; shorter version, ZDMG. liv. 515 ff.; lv. 1 ff. Ornatior ed. A. Bay. A. xxi. 2, 1901; trans. Stuttgart, 1899. Four tales ed. and trans. Kiel, 1890; notes on Simplicior, ZDMG. xlviii. 580 ff. all by R. Schmidt, who has edited a Marāṭhī version, AKM. x. 4. In some MSS. all sorts of bad Sanskrit appear.

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³ Hertel, *Pañcatantra*, pp. 240 ff.

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The Ornatior seems to be by a Brahmin Cintāmaṇi Bhaṭṭa, who used the Jain *Pañcatantra* recension of Pūrṇabhadra (1199), though it is quite probable that an older form of the *Çukasaptati* was the source whence some at least of the tales of unfaithful wives were taken by the *Pañcatantra*. The Simplicior seems to be the work of a Çvetāmbara Jain, and it has been suggested that it is ultimately derived from a metrical form, while the occurrence of Prākrit verses has further given rise to the view that the collection may have been originally in Prākrit. The question does not admit of definite solution, nor is the work of great interest save in connexion with its western offshoots and its effect on vernacular literature. The eastern Rājasthānī version¹ is made from a Sanskrit original by Devadatta, son of Puruṣottamadeva, of unknown date; in it the judgement of Solomon is pronounced by a damsel.

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¹ *Suvābahuttarīkathā*; Hertel, *Festschrift Windisch*, pp. 138 ff.

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Still less attractive is the *Siṁhāsandvātriṁçikā*,² thirty-two tales told by the statues of maidens on a throne which is alleged to have been discovered by Bhoja of Dhārā in the eleventh century, when that king desired to seat himself on it. The throne, it turns out, had been won by Vikramāditya as a gift from Indra, and after his death in battle against Çālivāhana had been buried in the earth, and the thirty-two spirits bound there in statue form tell tales of the great monarch and receive release. The tales are far from exciting, and in the Jain recension of Kṣemaṁkara are ruined by being framed so as to make out the king to be a model of generosity who spent his substance in gifts to the priests of what he won by his great deeds of valour. The form of the work in this recension is marked by the presence of narrative verses at the beginning and end of each prose tale. More like the original form is perhaps the south-Indian version with gnomic verses and occasional narrative verses mingled in its prose. Another version consists of verse, while in a north-Indian recension the stories are lost in the morals. The Bengal version ascribed to Vararuci is merely based on the Jain recension, itself alleged to have used one in Māhārāṣṭrī. The work is clearly later than the *Vetālapañcaviṁçatikā*, but that gives no definite date, and it is not at all likely that it really was written for or under Bhoja of Dhārā. It contains the well-known tale of the king who gives to his dearly beloved wife the fruit which drives away age, only to find that it has passed from her to the master of horse and from him to a hetaira; in disgust the king abandons his throne. Vikramāditya's adventures are also the subject of an alleged epic in thirty chapters, the *Vīracaritra*³ of Ananta, whose real hero is rather Çūdraka, once co-regent of Çālivāhana, but later a supporter of the descendants of Vikramāditya; of the *Çālivāhana-kathā*⁴ in eighteen cantos, partly in prose, by Çivadāsa; of the *Mādhavānalakathā*¹ in simple prose with Sanskrit and Prākrit stanzas by Ānanda, pupil of Bhaṭṭa Vidyādhara; the anonymous *Vikramodaya*² in verse; the Jain compilation of the fifthteenth-century *Pañcadaṇḍacchatraprabandha*,³ &c. In this work he appears as a magician and master of black magic, while in the *Vikramodaya* he is a learned parrot who issues another version of Solomon's judgement.⁴

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² Weber, IS. xv. 185 ff.; F. Edgerton, AJP. xxxiii. 249 ff., and ed. HOS. 1926.

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³ H. Jacobi, IS. xiv. 97 ff.

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⁴ Eggeling, IOC. i. 1567 ft.

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¹ Ed. Pavolini, OC. IX, i. 430 ff.; GSAI. xxii. 313 ff. ; H. Schöhl, *Die Strophen der M.* (1914).

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² Zachariae, *Kl. Schriften*, pp. 152 ff., 166 ff.; IOC. i. no. 3960. Ch. 7 has a parallel in *Mahāvastu*, iii. 33 ff. (imaginary debts and like repayment).

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³ Ed. and trans. ABA. 1877.

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⁴ Zachariae, p. 154, n. 1 refers to the literature.

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The close contact of the literature of tales with the people is shown by the fact that later we find apparent Sanskrit versions of vernacular works as in the *Bharaṭakadvātriṃçikā*,⁵ tales intended to deride Brahmins, and obviously of Jain inspiration. Çivadāsa's *Kathārṇava*,⁶ thirty-five tales including stories of fools and thieves, is also late, and in Vidyāpati's *Puruṣaparīkṣā*,⁷ a collection of forty-four stories, we have the work of an author who won in the latter part of the fourteenth century fame as a Maithilī poet. To the same century belong also the unhistorical but interesting legends of authors and other important persons contained in the *Prabandhacintāmaṇi*⁸ and the *Prabandhakoça*⁹ of the Jain writers Merutuṅga and Rājaçekhara, while that collection of witty but quite untrustworthy legends of the court of Bhoja, the *Bhojaprabandha*¹⁰ of Ballālasena, is of the sixteenth century.

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⁵ Ed. J. Hertel, Leipzig, 1921 ; trans. *Ind. Erzähler*, 1922 ; *c.* A. D. 1400.

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⁶ Weber, *Ind. Streifen*, i. 251 f.; Pavolini, GSAI. ix. 189 f.

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⁷ Ed. Bombay, 1882.

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⁸ Trans. C. H. Tawney, BI. 1901 (date 1306).

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⁹ Hultzsch, *Reports*, iii. p. vi (1349).

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¹⁰ Ed. NSP. 1913 ; L. Oster, *Die Rezensionen des Bh.* (1911).

2. The Didactic Tale

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The tale which is aimed directly at edification rather than amusement is specially richly presented in Jain literature; the Jains were very fond of stories, but they demanded a moral, and hence their writers were often led to spoil good stories such as the legends of Vikramāditya by seeking to make the participants in high adventure rather tedious exponents of Jainism. First place among these works must be assigned to the *Pariśiṣṭaparvan*,¹ a supplement to his epic *Triṣaṣṭiśalākāpuruṣacarita* by Hemacandra. In it he deals with the oldest teachers of the Jain faith, and the tales he relates are no longer mythic and epic, but distinctly of the ordinary variety of folk-tale. We hear, for instance, of the incest of brother and sister, children of a hetaira; it is characteristic that the situation is less appreciated on its tragic side than from the point of view of the relationships resulting, a point raised in more innocent circumstances in the last of the tales of the Vampire. The historical figure of Candragupta is made the subject of strange legends, one of the most curious making out that he died a pious Jain.² We are told³ of the monk who showed the constancy required for living with a hetaira during the whole rainy season without breaking his vow of chastity; another, who had shown courage enough to spend the same period in the company of a lion, essays the task but fails; piety however requires that the hetaira should convert him once more to the ways of virtue and herself become a nun.⁴

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¹ Ed. H. Jacobi, BI. 1891; sel. trans. J. Hertel, Leipzig, 1908; Keith, JRAS. 1908, pp. 1191 f.

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² Smith (EHI. pp. 154, 458) strangely believes this legend.

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³ viii. 110 ff.

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⁴ i. 90 ff. (Valkalacīrin) is a variant of Ṛṣyaśṛṅga; ii. 446 ff., the ordeal of an adulteress, is trans. J. J. Meyer, *Isoldes Gottesurteil* (1914), pp. 130 ff.

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The Jain Caritras and Purāṇas which contain many legends do not normally attain the level of literature, but more importance attaches to the elaborate allegory of human life in the form of a tale written in 906 by the renowned author Siddha or Siddharṣi. A late and doubtless unreliable authority⁵ tells that he was induced to adopt Jainism because his young wife and his mother, annoyed at his late hours, one night insisted on shutting the door on him, so that he went to the always open door of some Jains and refused to give up his intention of becoming a Jain monk. The same authority puts him down as a cousin of the famous poet Māgha. In point of fact the *Upamitibhavaprapañcākathā*,⁶ which is in prose with considerable numbers of stanzas interposed from time to time, is by no means badly written, and the author has kindly supplied a key at the end of the introduction to the allegory, so that it is not difficult to follow. His Sanskrit, which he deliberately chose because it was a sign of culture, is not difficult—indeed, he promises that it will be as easy to follow as Prākrit, but the impression of the work as a whole is, as in the case of most allegories, one of unrelieved dreariness, no doubt partly due to the extreme difficulty in making anything picturesque out of the dry and scholastic Jain tenets and the somewhat narrow views of life prevalent in Jain circles.

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⁵ The *Prabhāvakacaritra* of Prabhācandra and Pradyumna Sūri (1250 A. D.), a continuation of Hemacandra's *Pariśiṣṭaparvan*.

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⁶ Ed. BI. 1899 ff. Trans. A. Ballini, GSAI. xvii–xix, xxi–xxiv.

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Of simpler type are the many Kathās or Kathānakas in which well-known *motifs* are adapted to illustrate Jain tenets. These are numerous in the Prākrit literature, being preserved both in commentaries on the canon and separately, and in Sanskrit form they tend to be late. Two interesting tales are the *Campaka-çreṣṭhikathānaka*¹ and the *Pālagopālakathānaka*² of Jinakīrti, who wrote in the first half of the fifteenth century. The former takes the form of a frame story enclosing three tales, one of Rāvaṇa's vain effort to avoid fate, while in the latter we have with other matter a version of the tale of a woman who accused of attempts on her honour the youth who has refused to yield to her seductions. The *Samyaktvakaumudī*³ illustrates the plan of inserting tales within a narrative; the pious Arhaddāsa relates to his eight wives and they to him how they obtained true religion (*samyaktva*), their tales being overheard both by a king who wanders about his capital and a thief. On the other hand the *Kathākoça*,⁴ also of unknown date, is a series of tales without connexion, in bad Sanskrit with verses in Prākrit, which gives a very poor Jain version of the *Nala*.⁵

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¹ A. Weber, SBA. 1883, pp. 567 ff., 885 ff.; J. Hertel, ZDMG. lxv. 1-51, 425-70.

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² J. Hertel, BSGW. lxix. 4; *Indische Erzähler*, vii (1922); Bloomfield, TAPA. liv. 164 ff.

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³ A. Weber, SBA. 1889, pp. 731 ff.

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⁴ Trans. C. H. Tawney, London, 1895.

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⁵ Hemavijaya's *Kathāratnākara* is trans. Hertel. Rājaçekhara (14th cent.) in his *Antarakathāsaṁgraha* (cf. Pullé, SIFI. i. 1 ff.; ii. 1 ff.) has a version of the judgement of Solomon (Tessitori, IA. xlii. 148 ff.; Hertel, *Geist des Ostens*, i. 189 ff.).

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