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A History of Sanskrit Literature c21: XIV. The Great Romances

A History of Sanskrit Literature c21

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English

Contents

XIV. The Great Romances

1. The Age and Works of Daṇḍin

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OF Daṇḍin we know really nothing save what can be gathered from his works and late tradition. The latter asserts his authorship of three books, and it is generally conceded that of these we have two, the *Daçakumāracarita* and the *Kāvyādarça*. The third has been variously identified; the view of Pischel that it was the *Mṛcchakaṭikā* was based in effect merely on the general resemblance of social relations described in the drama and in the *Daçakumāracarita* and the anonymous citation of a line found in the drama by the *Kāvyādarça*. Now that we know that the line is found also in Bhāsa, the argument is less strong than ever. But it is very dubious if the *Chando-viciti* referred to in the *Kāvyādarça* is intended by Daṇḍin to be his own work, and even if it were it is possible that it and the *Kālapariccheda* also alluded to were mere chapters to be appended to the *Kāvyādarça*. Even the identity of authorship of the *Kāvyādarça* and the *Daçakumāracarita* has been doubted on various grounds. It has been pointed out¹ that the vulgarity and occasional obscenity of language in the romance accord ill with the insistence in the *Kāvyādarça* on freedom from coarseness, and certain real or alleged inelegancies of diction have been asserted to be impossible in an author who wrote on poetics. But neither contention is of serious value. Apart from the notorious difference between precept and practice, it is perfectly possible and even probable that the romance came from the youth of Daṇḍin and the *Kāvyādarça* from his more mature judgement, while most of the alleged errors in grammar may safely be denied or at least are of the type which other poets permit themselves.²

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¹ Agashe, ed. pp. xxv ff.

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² The ascription to him of the *Avantisundarīkathā*, of which we have a fragment, is quite implausible; S. K. Dé, IHQ. i. 31 ff.; iii. 394 ff.

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The date of Daṇḍin is still open to dispute, and if the *Kāvyādarça* were not to be taken into account would be even more difficult to determine than it actually is. If, for reasons which will be given later, we place the *Kāvyādarça* definitely before Bhāmaha (*c.* A. D. 700), there is no reason to assert that he wrote much earlier, and the chief impression conveyed by the *Daçakumāracarita* is that its geography¹ contemplates a state of things anterior to the empire of Harṣavardhana, and that its comparative simplicity suggests a date anterior to the work of Subandhu and Bāṇa. Nor is there anything to suggest a later date. The corruption of manners adduced by Wilson in favour of the legend which makes him an ornament of the court of Bhoja of Dhārā, so far as it was real, merely represents a regular feature of one aspect of Indian life.

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¹ Collins, *The Geographical Data of the Raghuvamśa and Daśakumāracarita* (1907), p. 46.

2. The Daçakumāracarita

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It is very probable that it was from Guṇāḍhya that Daṇḍin derived the conception of the plot of the romance.² The device by which Naravāhanadatta and his companions, reunited after strange adventures, repeat the account of what has befallen each of them is strongly suggestive of the device by which the ten princes of Daṇḍin's tale expound their fortunes when reunited after their original separation. The idea is ingenious, for it provides a certain measure of unity in what else would be merely a series of unconnected stories. If Hertel is right, however, Daṇḍin's plan would have extended far beyond what he has accomplished; he finds allusions to a scheme which would have told of the history of king Kāmapāla and his five wives in three different births on earth, so that what we have is a mere fragment. It may be true that Daṇḍin contemplated some such work, but there is really no proof of it, and still less that he ever actually wrote it. Indeed, Hertel himself holds that he left even the *Daçakumāracarita* itself as we have it, with an abrupt beginning and incomplete, his purpose of carrying out his undertaking having been frustrated for some cause or other. This is of course conjectural, nor can any conclusion be drawn from the fact that so many efforts³ were later made to supply a beginning and to end the text to prove that, if these parts of Daṇḍin's work had ever existed, they would not have been lost. The fates of books are far too uncertain to admit of such reasoning being decisive.

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² Ed. G. Bühler and P. Peterson, BSS. 1887-91 (2nd ed. by Agashe); A. B. Gajendragadkar, Dharwar. Trans. J. J. Meyer, Leipzig, 1902; J. Hertel, Leipzig, 1922; Weber, *Ind. Streifen*, i. 308 ff.

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³ For one by Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa see Appendix in Agashe's ed.; there is one in verse by Vināyaka; a continuation by Cakrapāṇi and a revision by Gopīnātha (IOC. i. 1551 f.) exist.

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What is certain is that we have in our manuscript quite frequently beside the text of the work proper an introduction, Pūrvapīṭhikā, and in one manuscript and its derivatives a conclusion, Uttarapīṭhikā. That these are no part of Daṇḍin's work seems suggested at once by the names, and this conclusion is confirmed by overwhelming evidence. The Pūrvapīṭhikā ought to lead up merely to the first tale in the text of the romance, but in point of fact it gives tales of two princes in order to make up the number of ten, Daṇḍin's own work extending only to eight, the last imperfect. Moreover, the contents of the introduction by no means correspond precisely with the facts made clear in the romance itself. Thus, while in the ancestry of the princes Rājavāhana, Puṣpodbhava, Apahāravarman, and Upahāravarman there is no discrepancy of moment, the accounts of Arthapāla, Pramati, and Viçruta cannot be reconciled. In Daṇḍin Arthapāla and Pramati are Kāmapāla's sons by Kāntimatī and Tārāvalī, in the introduction Arthapāla is Tārāvalī's son and Pramati is not his half-brother but merely a son of the minister Sumati, a misunderstanding of a passage in Daṇḍin. Viçruta, again, to Daṇḍin is descended from the merchant Vaiçravaṇa and grandson of Sindhudatta, in the introduction it is the minister Padmodbhava who is his grandfather. It is probable that the ancestries of the princes Somadatta, Mitragupta, and Mantragupta given in the introduction are mere figments, that of Mantragupta being given as Sumantra from a mere misreading in Daṇḍin, while in reality the princes in Daṇḍin's own view were sons of the three remaining wives of Kāmapāla himself, and therefore half-brothers of the hero Rājavāhana. Moreover, when in Daṇḍin Caṇḍavarman finds Rājavāhana with the princess, he denounces him as an impostor who has under the cloak of religion corrupted the people and made them believe in false gods, but the introduction has nothing of this, and in lieu of making the prince a clever trickster has to provide him with an accomplice in the shape of a magician in order to accomplish his ends. So, again, in Daṇḍin we hear of a younger brother as guilty of aiding the prince to obtain access to the princess's harem, while the introduction has provided him with the magician for this very end. Upahāravarman's own tale is that he was brought up by a monk, the introduction gives the duty to the king. It is clear, too, that the scene at the end of the introduction does not accord with the beginning of the text. Daṇḍin conceives Rājavāhana and his princess as already having enjoyed the sweets of love, and depicts the prince seeking to win a revival of her passion by tales of the ancient loves of gods and saints,¹ to which she responds. The introduction with incredible bad taste treats the occasion as the first scene between the two, and represents the prince as seeking to make his love repeat what he has been telling her, for the pleasure of listening to her doing so. Moreover, the matter imparted to the loving maiden was not in his view erotic, but an account of the fourteen worlds as a lesson on Brahmanical cosmography. We may safely say that the author of this stupidity was not Daṇḍin, whose own purpose doubtless was, as in chapter vi, to insert just before our present text some anecdotes of ancient love stories. The case against the Uttarapīṭhikā is even more convincing, for it is obvious from the end of the text that Daṇḍin was about to paint the model of a wise ruler, a task which the present conclusion does not even attempt. The fact that other efforts to supply an introduction are known is additional proof that the existing Pūrvapīṭhikā was not accorded general acceptance as Daṇḍin's work. It is possible that two hands are to be distinguished even in the Pūrvapīṭhikā itself.

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¹ Cf. the *Kāmasūtra's* insistence on the love of women for tellers of tales (p. 260).

3. The Content and Style of the Daçakumāracarita

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It has been suggested² that the romance is really to be regarded as a didactic work, an attempt to teach the doctrines of the Nītiçāstra in narratives of attractive character. This we may fairly pronounce to be an exaggeration and an injustice to the author, whose real aim we may be sure was to give pleasure, however ready he might be to show himself an expert in the rules of polity as well as those of the Kāmaçāstra. His distinctive quality is the application to the simple tale of the grand manner of the Kāvya, though in a moderation which is utterly lost in the case of Subandhu and Bāṇa. Doubtless he had predecessors in the attempt, though they are lost to us and we cannot even say whether the Bhaṭṭāra Haricandra to whom Bāṇa refers in the introduction to his *Harṣacarita* as a fine author of prose was a predecessor of Daṇḍin. It may be conjectured that the application of the Kāvya style to prose had its origin in panegyrics such as are seen in the inscriptions of Rudradāman and Hariṣeṇa which we have already considered, and that it was only later that it was thought suitable to apply similar methods to tales. The application, of course, made the tale vitally different from its effect in its more simple form. The work of Guṇāḍhya, even through its changed forms, as it has come down to us gives the definite impression of swift and easy narrative, the poets not pausing to exercise their descriptive talents; Daṇḍin leads the way to the result that the narrative is a mere skeleton, the descriptions the essence.

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² Hertel, trans. iii. 8 ff.

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In Daṇḍin, however, we are far from the period when an exercise in style is aimed at. The main interest of the romance lies in the substance,¹ with its vivid and picturesque account of low life and adventure, of magicians and fraudulent holy men, of princesses and ruined kings, of hetairai, of expert thieves, of fervent lovers, who in a dream or by a prophecy are urged on to seek the beloved. The world of the gods is regarded with singularly little respect, and the ministers to holiness are equally far from finding favour. Not that there is a total disregard of moral considerations; one prince consoles himself for his action in seeking to secure the wife of another, and slaying to fulfil the end, by moral principles. It is legitimate according to the text-books to abandon one of the three ends of man, duty, profit, and love, if it tends to the attainment of the other two, and if he has violated duty he has enabled his parents to escape from captivity, has secured himself the delights of love and the possession of a realm. Apahāravarman again is a prince of thieves; he plans on the model laid down by Karṇīsuta, author of an unhappily lost text-book on the art, to rob a city in order, it is true, to reimburse an unfortunate who has been robbed by a hetaira;

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¹ How far original is unknown. In vi the insertion of stories has a parallel in the *Kathāsaritsāgara* where the Vetāla stories come in the report of the sixth minister, and there is a parallel for Nitambavatī. The figures of the ungrateful and the ideal wives here have parallels in Jātakas 193 and 546; Winternitz, GIL. iii. 357.

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moreover, he understands that there are too many misers in residence. Mantragupta in disguise worms himself into the confidence of a foolish king, persuades him to bathe in the sea in order to acquire greater beauty, murders him, and parades himself before the people as the new form of the king, extolling the wonderful deed that has been accomplished, which has put to shame all mockers as to the powers of the gods to work miracles. Viçruta in order to secure his protégé’s restoration to power makes use both of the temple and the name of Durgā to perpetrate a successful fraud. The gods appear as justifying the most disgraceful deeds; the moon god is cited as justifying adultery, the hetaira in her successful effort to pervert the pious ascetic can find authority in the scandals regarding heaven. The ascetic is far from being adamant, and it is not Brahmins alone who are subject to satire; the merchant whom she plunders down to his loin-cloth abandons that also and becomes a Digambara Jain monk, but confesses that the sublime teachings of the Jina are but a swindle. The Brahmins again with their reports of evil, requiring a special sacrifice with vessels of pure gold, are derided, while nuns are all go-betweens and one Buddhist lady is the head procuress in the service of a hetaira. The might of fate does not rule the affairs of these active princes; true, Apahāravarman when caught stealing, Pūrṇabhadra captured by robbers, ascribe to this cause their mishaps, but they both are ready and able by human exertion to defeat effectively the decrees of that unstable deity.

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The realism of Daṇḍin’s outlook is entirely in accord with one strain of Indian tradition, that which from the *Ṛgveda* onwards notes and describes the sins of the gods, without any moral protest. It stands out the more prominently when it is compared with the pious attitude of the author of the Pūrvapīṭhikā. To him the sacrifice is the power that brings the gods; Rājahaṅsa is praised because of his devotion to the priests, the gods on earth, while Daṇḍin denies them that appellation save in one passage where his use for them of *dharaṇītala-taitila* is sneering, the term meaning also ‘rhinoceroses’. The king’s domestic priest possesses the full holiness of Brahman himself, and despite his appalling deeds the Brahmin Mātaṅga, because he died in saving another Brahmin, after an interesting tour of inspection of Yama’s hells is restored to life, and by his devotion to Çiva is rewarded with the aid of Rājavāhana to enable him to win an Asura princess and lordship of the nether regions. Not valour but Çiva’s club gives the king of Mālava victory over Rājahaṅsa. Daṇḍin makes a joke out of Mārkaṇḍeya’s curse which condemns Suratamañjarī, whose pearl necklace fell on the ascetic when bathing, to become a silver chain. The Pūrvapīṭhikā parts Çāmba from his wife for two months because of the curse of a water-fowl. The princes no longer are free agents; the great Vāmadeva and his acolytes protect and guard the father and the princess; Rājavāhana can win his princess only by a Brahmin’s aid.

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Characteristic of Daṇḍin is his power of characterization which is not content with making alive the more important figures on his stage, but invests with life and reality the minor personages. The ascetic Marīci, the merchant Vasupālita, and their seducer Kāmamañjarī, the old Brahmin who meets Pramati at the cock-fight and seconds him *con amore* in the trick to win his bride, improving on his instructions, the police commandant Kāntaka, who is deluded into believing that the king’s daughter is in love with him and treasures the nurse’s soiled garment as a pledge of affection, and the nurse herself, Çṛgālikā, who seconds Apahāravarman’s efforts to win the princess, are all depicted with liveliness, force, and insight. Nor is Daṇḍin limited in range; in chapter viii we have a deeper note in the characterization of the young king Anantavarman, his loyal minister Vasurakṣita, whom he casts aside because his advice is too wise for his taste, and the shallow but witty courtier Vihārabhadra whose advice leads to the utter ruin of realm and king.

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The humour and wit of the author are remarkable and far more attractive to modern taste than are usually these qualities in Indian works. The whole work is pervaded by the humour of the wild deeds of the princes, their determination to secure what they wish, and their light-hearted indifference to the morality of the means which they employ. The deception of Marīci¹ by the hetaira is perfectly drawn; the damsel pretends to be enamoured of the holy life, the ascetic warns her of the trials and advises her mother, who is shocked at her daughter’s indifference to duty, to let her stay a short time to experience what her purpose means;

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¹ Lüders’ comparison of the Ṛṣyaçṛṅga legend (GN. 1897, p. 109) is needless. For Christian parallels see Günter, *Buddha*, pp. 233 ff.

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alas, it is the ascetic who learns many things not suitable for ascetics. The silver chain which binds the captive turns itself into a beautiful maiden in an unexpected but delightful way. Queen Vasundharā finds a brilliant way of spreading a false rumour; she invites the oldest of the citizens and the highest of the ministers to a secret conclave at which under the most solemn pledge of secrecy she reveals the *canard*. There is admirable wit in Apahāravarman’s pious resolve to bring into a better frame of mind the misers of Campā by revealing to their eyes the perishable nature of all that is earthly, in vulgar parlance by stealing their money. Mitragupta offers Candrasenā a magic ointment to make her appear like a female ape to the prince, but she replies that she does not wish in this life to be parted from her mortal body. Arthapāla finds in the earth a lovely damsel whom he likens to the goddess of royal sovereignty who has taken refuge in the earth to avoid the sight of so many bad kings. Upahāravarman makes a very bitter jest at the expense of king Vikaṭavarman who is under the impression that he is his beloved queen; to confirm him in this view he asks him to swear to confine his love in future with his new form to the queen alone: the fool is prepared to take the oath but Upahāravarman continues: *kim vā çapathena? kaiva hi mānuṣī mām paribhaviṣyati? yady apsarobhiḥ saṁgacchase saṁgacchasva kāmam. kathaya kāni te rahasyāni. tatkathanānte tvatsvarūpabhraṁçaḥ.* ‘Nay, what need of an oath? What woman can vie with me? But if thou wouldst mate with the Apsarases, thou mayst do so at pleasure. Tell me thy secrets; when thou hast told, thy change of shape will come to pass.’ The foolish king little knows the meaning of the words which portend his wedlock with a denizen of the next world, and a change not to a fairer form but the passing of this mortal life.

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In the arrangement of his work Daṇḍin shows distinct judgement. He varies his tone; from the light-hearted or grim humour of chapters ii and v we pass to the earnest tragedy of chapter viii. He alters his form; while most of the books are without break of subject, in chapter vi we have four clever tales, those of Dhūminī, Gominī, Nimbavatī, and Nitambavatī, told in succession to illustrate the maxim that cunning alone is able to accomplish the most difficult ends. If the work had been completed, as we have seen, before the present opening, we should doubtless have had some pictures of ancient love scenes.

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Daṇḍin is unquestionably masterly in his use of language. He is perfectly capable of simple easy narrative, and in the speeches which he gives to his characters he avoids carefully the error of elaboration of language. But he is prepared to exhibit his talent and command of the language in descriptions and in these he is markedly an adherent of the Vaidarbha style, and excels, as a traditional estimate holds, in pleasing sound effects. He aims both at exactness of expression and clearness of sense, at the avoidence of harsh sounds and exaggeration or bombast; he attains beauty, harmony of sound, and effective expression of sentiment. He makes free use, but with reasonable moderation, of the right in prose to construct long compounds, but they in the main are not difficult of comprehension. His desire to vary his forms of description is marked and receives effective illustration. Twice he has to describe the beauty of a slumbering maiden; in the first case¹ he resorts to a complete catalogue of all her perfections as the hero gazes on her and notes them in minutest detail through her thin garments; in the second case there is no realistic description, but four similes from mythology and nature serve to express her loveliness.² Yet again a picture is given of beauty unveiled, but the occasion is different;

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the hero sets up as an astrologer, and in this capacity has the privilege of inspecting youthful beauty presented to him to ascertain if it possesses the auspicious signs of suitability for marriage.³ Reference has already been made to the witty close of the description of the beautiful maiden of the underground dwelling, where the jest is given special point by following on several more stereotyped complimentary epithets.⁴ Another description is decidedly ingenious and is addressed to the lovely one herself: *bhāmini nanu bahv aparāddham bhavatyā cittajanmano yad amuṣya jīvitabhūtām Ratim ākṛtyā kadarthitavatī dhanuryaṣṭim bhrūlatābhyām bhramaramālāmāyīm jyāṁ nīlālakadyutibhir astrāṇy apāṅgavīkṣitavṛṣṭibhir mahārajanadhvajapaṭāñçukaṁ daçanacchadamayūkhajālaiḥ prathamasuhṛdam malayamārutam parimalapaṭīyasā niḥçvāsapavanena parabhṛtarutam atimañjulaiḥ pralāpaiḥ puṣpamayīm patākām bhujayaṣṭibhyāṁ digvijayārambhapūrṇa-* *kumbhamithunaṁ urojayugalena krīḍāsaro nābhimaṇḍalena saṁnāhyarathamaṇḍalaṁ çroṇimaṇḍalena bhavanaratnatoraṇa-stambhayugalam ūruyugalena līlākarṇakisalayaṁ caraṇatalapra-bhābhiḥ.* ‘Hast thou, gracious lady, not wrought much wrong on our lord Love? Hast thou not utterly eclipsed with thy form Rati, who is all his life to him; with thy creeper-like brows the staff of his bow; his bowstring formed of a row of bees with the flashings of thy dark locks; his arrows with the showers of thy sidelong glances;

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the silk of his saffron-dyed banner with the ruddy rays darting from thy lips; his dearest friend, the wind from Malaya, with the sweet fragrance of thy breath; the Kokila with thy charming utterance; his flower ensign with the flagstaffs of thy arms; the two bowls which were filled when he started to conquer the world with thy two rounded breasts, the lake in which he plays with the circle of thy navel; the rounded frame of his battle-chariot with thy round hips; the twin pillars of the jewelled arch of his palace with thy twin thighs; the lotus behind his ear with which he plays with the gleaming red of the soles of thy feet?’ The same variety is seen in his many changes of expression in describing the dawn and the sunset, which he delights to do.

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So Upahāravarman sees the dawn thus: *cintayaty eva mayi mahārṇavonmagnamār-taṇḍaturaṅgamaçvāsarayāvadhūteva vyavartata triyāmā samu-dragarbhavāsajaḍīkṛta iva mandapratāpo divasakaraḥ prādur āsīt.* ‘While yet I pondered, night passed away, as though wafted away by the hot breath of the steeds of the sun as he emerged from the mighty ocean, and the sun stood revealed, but yet feeble his might as though he had been paralysed by his dwelling within the bosom of the sea.’ There is a very effective example of the simplicity and vividness of his style in his account in the legend of Dhūminī of the appalling famine which led to the tragic events of that tale: *kṣīṇasāraṁ sasyam oṣadhayo bandhyā na phalavanto vanaspatayaḥ klībā meghā bhinnasrotasaḥ sravantyaḥ paṅkaçeṣāṇi palvalāni niḥsyandāny utsamaṇḍalāni viralībhūtaṁ kandamūlaphalam avahīnāḥ kathā galitāḥ kalyāṇot-savakriyā bahulībhūtāni taskarakulāny anyonyam abhakṣayan pra-jāḥ paryaluṇṭhann itas tato balākāpāṇḍurāṇi naraçiraḥkapālāni paryahiṇḍanta çuṣkāḥ kākamaṇḍalyaḥ çūnyībhūtāni nagaragrā-makharvaṭapuṭabhedanādīni.* ‘The corn lost all its strength, the herbs became barren, the trees bore no fruit, the clouds rained not, the beds of the streams became dry, the tanks were reduced to mud, the springs ceased to flow, bulbs, roots, and fruits were hard to find, all ceased to converse or celebrate auspicious events, hordes of robbers became more common, people ate one another in their hunger, men's skulls, bleached white as cranes, rolled about, great flocks of starving crows flew around, while cities great and small, market-places, villages, and other resorts of men were abandoned.' It is significant that the author of the Pūrvapīṭhikā is quite unable to vie in description with his model, though he exaggerates the length of his compounds and in the introduction commits himself to a stanza playing on Daṇḍin's name.

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He commits also the grave fault of excessive use of alliterations, perpetrating the continuous riming effect of: *kumārā mārābhirāmā rāmādyapauruṣā ruṣā bhasmīkṛtārayo rayopahasitasamīraṇā raṇābhiyānena yānenābhyudayaçaṅsaṁ rājānam akārṣuḥ.* 'The princes, beautiful as Māra himself, with the heroism of Rāma and other heroes, reducing their enemies to ashes in their rage, in their swiftness defeating even the wind, advancing in their chariots to battle assured the king of victory.' It may be doubted whether it is not to his carelessness rather than to clerical errors or to learned pedantry that we should ascribe the incorrect forms *mahadāyudha*, *mahadabhikhyā*, *mahadāçā*, *āvoci*, *çāsan*, *adañci*, presented by manuscript tradition.¹ These are very different from the forms which have been censured in Daṇḍin, such as *āliṅgayitum*, *brāhmaṇabrūvaḥ*, *enam anuraktā*, which are clearly defensible as they stand.

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¹ ii. p. 62.

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² v. p. 13.

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³ vi. p. 31.

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⁴ iv. p. 10.

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¹ For differences in language between the Pūrvapīṭhikā and the text of Daṇḍin, see Gawroński, *Sprachl. Untersuchungen über das Mṛcchakaṭika und das Daśakumāracarita* (1907), pp. 47 ff.

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It must not, however, be denied that we see traces here and there of the desire even in Daṇḍin to strain language. The *tour de force* by which chapter vii is spoken by Mantragupta without any labial letters ² because his loved one had bitten him so deeply on the lower lip that he could not form labials is noteworthy but hardly admirable, and in chapter ii we find a piece ³ of complex argument elliptically expressed which might do credit for difficulty of comprehension to Subandhu or Bāṇa. But in him these deviations are exceptions, and though Indian taste would never have ranked his style with that of the other great romancers it is greatly to be preferred on modern standards. In one point, however, Daṇḍin surpasses Subandhu. He obeys the rule that the perfect shall only be used in describing what is not part of one's personal experience.¹ Hence in the narratives of the princes the perfect is excluded, although it is permitted in the four short tales inserted in chapter vi; in the princes' narrative he uses only imperfects, aorists, the historical present, and participles, active and passive. His frequent use of aorists is doubtless a sign of his familiarity with grammar and his anxiety to exhibit the fact.

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² In *Kāvyādarça*, iii. 83, the difficulty of the feat is recognized. Cf. Jacobi, *ZDMG*, xl. 99. Pindar is credited with writing a poem without *s*; cf. Ohlert, *Rätsel und Rätselsprüche*, pp. 3 ff.

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³ p. 50, ll. 7 ff. (ed. Bühler).

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¹ Speyer, *Sansk. Synt.*, p. 248.

4. Subandhu

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Of Subandhu we know as little as of Daṇḍin. He appears first in Bāṇa who mentions in the introduction to the *Harṣacarita* the *Vāsavadattā* as quelling the pride of poets, and in the *Kādambarī* in celebrating his own work he uses the epithet *atidvayī*, 'surpassing two,' which is believed to refer to the *Vāsavadattā*² and the *Bṛhatkathā* of Guṇāḍhya. That Subandhu's work is meant is not now very seriously questioned, Peterson himself having long since withdrawn his suggestion to that effect. Subandhu's name appears with those of Bhāsa, Kālidāsa, and Haricandra in Vākpatirāja's *Gaüḍavaha*; he is classed with Meṇṭha, Bhāravi, and Bāṇa by Maṅkha in his *Çrīkaṇṭhacarita*; and Kavirāja in the *Rāghavapāṇḍavīya* boasts that Subandhu, he, and Bāṇa are masters of ambiguous diction; while a Kanarese inscription of A.D. 1168 ascribes to him mastery in Kāvya. Quite late tradition makes him a contemporary of the legendary Vikramāditya and a nephew of Vararuci. But the only reference to that monarch shows him to have been in the remote past, and the date of Subandhu must depend on his priority to Bāṇa, which is borne out by a mass of obvious coincidences in diction, and on the other hand by his own literary allusions. Of the many works known to the poet most are decidedly older, such as the epics, the *Kāmasūtra*, the *Chandoviciti* section of the *Nāṭyaçāstra*, and the *Bṛhatkathā*; but he knew well not only the Upaniṣads but also the Nyāya and Mīmāṅsā schools of philosophy and Buddhism. One passage enables us to fix an upper date with some certainty; he describes a maiden as *nyāyasthitim iva Uddyotakarasvarūpām Bauddhasaṁgatim iva Alaṁkārabhūṣitām*. It is impossible to doubt that Uddyotakara is referred to; perhaps the reference following is to Dharmakīrti, the Buddhist logician, as Çivarāma asserts, because we know now that Uddyotakara possibly used and was used by Dharmakīrti, and nothing can be more natural than to find the two together. This means,¹ however, in view of the evidence available as to Dharmakīrti's date, that Subandhu must be placed in the second quarter of the seventh century and that he was only a contemporary of Bāṇa whose work came to fruition before Bāṇa's. Unlike that author, he cannot have enjoyed the patronage of Harṣavardhana, and we may presume that his activity was carried on at some other capital.

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² Ed. F. Hall, BI. 1859; South Indian text, ed. L. H. Gray, CUIS. 8, 1913, with translation. Cf. Peterson, *Subhāṣitāvali*, p. 133.

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¹ Keith, JRAS. 1914, pp. 1102 ff. The *Alaṁkāra* is not to be regarded as a work on poetics.

5. The Vāsavadattā

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Though the name Vāsavadattā is famous in Indian literature, we do not find in it any parallel for the tale of Subandhu, unless we infer from the mere name recorded as the subject of an Ākhyāyikā by Patañjali on Kātyāyana² that he knew of this story, a most implausible theory. Nor is it of much consequence whether we regard the work as falling technically into the category of Ākhyāyikā or Kathā. Bāṇa³ indeed, seems to suggest the former appellation as appropriate, but while Daṇḍin⁴ is no doubt right in dismissing controversy on this point as foolish, it is clear that, if distinctions are made, the *Vāsavadattā* accords with the nature of a Kathā. Thus, if we take the essential feature of an Ākhyāyikā to be that it is told by the hero, is divided into Ucchvāsas, has passages in Vaktra⁵ and Aparavaktra metres, these characteristics do not suit the text; if, on the other hand, we adopt Amarasiṅha's⁶ distinction and make the subject-matter of the Ākhyāyikā traditional as opposed to invented by the poet, the *Vāsavadattā* seems to disagree with the description of the Ākhyāyikā. The similarity of the tale to the manner of the *Kādambarī*, which is clearly a Kathā, is practically decisive in favour of that genre.¹ But, accepting as we may the originality in some degree of the poet, we may admit that he makes use of the whole stock-in-trade of Indian narratives, the seeing in a dream of one's future mate, the overhearing of the chatter of birds, magic steeds, the fatal effect of ascetics' curses, transformations of shape, and recovery of one's true form by a lover's embrace. It is essentially the aim of the poet not to trouble himself with the plot or the characters but to display his virtuosity in language.

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² On Pāṇini, iv. 3. 87; cf. on iv. 2. 60.

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³ *Harṣacarita*, v. 10.

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⁴ *Kāvyādarça*, i. 23 ff.

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⁵ Cf. Subandhu (ed. Hall), p. 184.

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⁶ i. 6. 5.

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¹ The story contains the taking of a maiden, a battle (pp. 290 ff.; Nobel's denial (*Indian Poetry*, p. 185) is an oversight), separation, and success, as required by Bhāmaha (i. 27), and seems original.

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King Cintāmaṇi has a beautiful son, Kandarpaketu, who in a dream beheld a girl of beauty exceeding his own; sleep leaves him and with his friend Makaranda he sallies forth to seek the unknown. In the Vindhya as the prince lies sleepless he overhears the curtain-lecture of an indignant Maina bird to her husband, who defends himself for late hours by telling how the monarch Çṛṅgāraçekhara has a peerless daughter, Vāsavadattā, who in a dream has seen the lovely vision of a youth, of whom she is deeply enamoured. She has sent her confidante Tamālikā to bear to the youth an assurance of her deep love. There is no difficulty in securing the meeting of the two at Pāṭaliputra, but the prince learns to his horror that the king, wearied of her unwedded state, means forthwith to marry her to the Vidyādhara chief Puṣpaketu. The lovers therefore flee by means of a magic steed to the Vindhya where they fall asleep. Awakened, the prince finds to his sorrow that the maiden has departed, and in his despair he is only kept from self-destruction by a voice from the sky promising him reunion. After long wandering he finds a statue which at his touch awakens to life as his beloved, and in reunion they live in great happiness in Kandarpaketu's capital. The plot it will be seen is negligible, not even worth serious criticism, but it would be quite unjust to accuse Subandhu of indecency or savagery as one distinguished editor did. To apply mid-Victorian conceptions of propriety to India is obviously absurd and wholly misleading. Indian writers, not excluding Kālidāsa, indulge habitually *con amore* in minute descriptions of the beauty of women and the delights of love which are not in accord with western conventions of taste. But the same condemnation was applied by contemporaries to Swinburne, and Shakespeare’s frankness is more resented by English than by German taste. What is essential is to repel the connexion of such descriptions with immorality, and to assert that they must be approved or condemned on artistic grounds alone. There is all the world of difference between what we find in the great poets of India and the frank delight of Martial and Petronius in descriptions of immoral scenes.

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What we have in Subandhu is an exercise in style applied in descriptions of mountain, river, stream, the valour of the prince, the beauty of the heroine, and the strife of the contending armies, whose struggle led to the loss of the princess, who unwittingly trespassed into the garden of an ascetic and was cursed by him with the customary injustice of his kind to become a stone. Of serious characterization there is nothing whatever; Subandhu’s own claim is that he is a storehouse of cleverness in the composition of works in which there is a pun in every syllable (*pratyakṣarāçleṣamayavinyāsavaidagdhyanidhi*), and this is carried out in prose with occasional verses interspersed and with an introduction in verse. Subandhu’s translator has generously—and not without justice—claimed for him a true melody in the long rolling compounds, a sesquipedalian majesty which can never be equalled except in Sanskrit, a lulling music in the alliterations, and a compact brevity in the paronomasias which are in most cases veritable gems of terseness and twofold appropriateness. In fact Subandhu’s ideal was clearly the Gauḍa style with its enormous compounds, its love of etymologizing, its deliberate exaggeration, its love of harsh sounds, its fondness for alliteration, its attempt to match sense closely with sound, its research for recondite results in the use of figures and above all in paronomasias and cases of apparent incongruity. How far Subandhu’s accomplishment was original we cannot say in the absence of so much literature now lost, but Daṇḍin certainly is very different in style, and it is of interest that in the period after Subandhu we begin to find in inscriptions¹ a rather free use of paronomasias and the figure incongruity (*virodha*). Thus, as a parallel to Subandhu's *dhanadenāpi pracetasā*, 'who is Kubera, yet also Varuṇa, for he is generous, yet wise,' we have *dhanado 'pi na pramattaḥ*, 'he was Kubera, not Varuṇa, for he was generous, not inattentive.' It must, however, be said that alliteration, pretty when used with a point, becomes tedious when practised too often, and it is impossible not to be wearied by a string of puns even if they cannot be styled obscene and are at the worst only dull. Granted that the poet's fancy² is able, with the resources of the Sanskrit language, to find a vast variety of clever *double entendres*, moderation and judgement are conspicuously lacking throughout in Subandhu. Moreover, he has to perfection the capacity of constructing a vast sentence which rests on a single verb, while in its enormous compass by means of a series of epithets, each composed of a long compound, it contains infinitely more matter than the mind can conveniently assimilate at one time. The disadvantage of the prose form is here abundantly apparent; the stanza compels compression and a certain moderation, and Subandhu has verses³ which show that, when placed under restraint, he was capable of really effective writing. The picture of the lion's attack lacks puns and is admirable.

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¹ Gwalior inscr. (874–5) EI. i. 157; cf. inscr. of Govinda III (807–8), EI. vi. 246 ff. and others (Gray, p. 31).

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² Here and there he reduced to prose older verses; Zachariae, *Gurupūjākaumudī*, pp. 38 ff.

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³ After the twelve Āryās of the introduction there are only three cases of verses, Āryā, Çārdūlavikrīḍita (2); Çikhariṇī, Sragdharā; Āryā.

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*paçyodañcadavāñcadañcitavapuḥpaçcārdhapūrvārdhabhāk*
*stabdhottānitapṛṣṭhaniṣṭhitamanāgbhugnāgralāṅgūlabhṛt*
*daṁṣṭrākoṭiviçaṅkaṭāsyakuharaḥ kurvan saṭām utkaṭām*
*utkarṇaḥ kurute kramaṁ karipatau krūrākṛtiḥ kesarī.*

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'See, the lion, raising the hind quarters of his fair body, with the fore quarters depressed, his tail, slightly bent, remaining poised over his firm arched back, his cavernous mouth terrible with the tips of his fangs, tossing aloft his mane, with ears erect, doth make, with aspect dread, his assault on the lord of elephants.' The picture of the lion is perfect in every detail, and the alliterations rather heighten the effect, while the frequent use of *ṭ* and harsh sound-combinations makes the effect all the more impressive, illustrating what in poetics ranks as Svabhāvokti, which is in essentials a vivid description. An instance of the figure Sahokti, unified description, which is found already in the *Rāmāyaṇa*, is found in: *samaṁ dviṣāṁ dhanuṣāṁ ca jīvākṛṣṭiṁ yodhāç cakruḥ*. ‘The warriors drew at once their bow-strings and took their enemies’ lives.’ The figure Utprekṣā, lively fancy, is seen in many imaginative flights, such as the description of the moon as: *dadhidhavale kālakṣapaṇakagrāsapiṇḍa iva niçāyamunāphenapuñja iva menakānakhamārjanaçilāçakala iva*, ‘white as curd, shaped like a ball of food for an ascetic’s meal, as it were a mass of the foam of the Yamunā, night, a sliver of stone for the polishing of Menakā’s nails.’ Akin to this is the mental picture involved in supposition, Saṁbhāvana: *tvatkṛte yānayā vedanānubhūtā sa yadi nabhaḥ patrāyate sāgaro melānandāyate brahmāyate lipikaro bhujagarājāyate kathakas tadā kim api katham apy anekayugasahasrair abhilikhyate kathyate vā*. ‘The sorrow that this maiden hath endured because of thee might be written or told only in some way or another in thousands of æons, if the sky became the paper, the sea the inkwell, Brahman himself the scribe, and the Lord of Serpents the narrator.’¹ Within limits puns are attractive, as in the verse:

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¹ For parallels cf. R. Köhler, *Kl. Schriften*, iii. 293 ff.; Zachariae, *Kl. Schriften*, pp. 205 f.

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*sa rasavattā vihatā na vakā vilasanti carati no kaṅkaḥ*
*sarasīva kīrtiçeṣaṁ gatavati bhuvi Vikramāditye.*

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‘Moisture is gone (eloquence is destroyed), the cranes sport not (new men plume themselves), the heron is gone (who devours not whom?), like a lake Vikramāditya hath left the earth, save indeed in fame.’ Even on a larger scale it may be effective:

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*jīvākṛṣṭiṁ sa cakre mṛdhabhuvi dhanuṣaḥ çatrur āsīd gatāsur*
*lakṣāptir mārgaṇānām abhavad aribale tadyaças tena labdham*
*muktā tena kṣameti tvaritam aribalair uttamāṅgaiḥ praviṣṭā*
*pañcatvaṁ dveṣisainye gatam avanipatir nāpa saṁkhyāntaram.*

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‘The king on the battlefield drew to himself the life (string) of his bow; yet the enemy perished. In the host of the foe suppliants received a lakh of gold (the king’s arrows found their mark), yet the glory (due to them for generosity) was won by him. Thinking he had abandoned the earth, the foe swiftly occupied it with their heads (the king losing patience, the foe was swiftly laid low with head on earth in death). The hostile host five times sought battle (met with death); the king needed no higher number (as all were disposed of).' Still, while this commingling of the pun, Çleṣa, and apparent incongruity, Virodha or Virodhābhāsa, is ingenious, it is clearly fatiguing when kept up. Still more irritating is the further development in the figure of exhaustive statement, Parisaṁkhyā, when it is intended to express by words not only their literal sense but a denial of what might be the sense if a pun were intended; thus in *netrotpāṭanam munīnām* we are to see the sense 'there was plucking out of roots in the case of wormwood trees only (for ascetics do not pluck out their eyes).' Sound effects are sometimes ingenious, as in the following Yamaka describing the wind: *āndolitakusumakesare keçareṇumuṣi raṇitamadhuramaṇīnāṁ ramaṇīnāṁ vikacakamudākare mudākare*, 'rocking the filaments of the flowers, stealing the pollen from the hair of fair damsels with sweet chiming jewels, expanding many a lotus, and causing delight.' But alliteration, Anuprāsa, can be merely tedious, as in the description of the Revā as: *madakalakalahaṁsasārasarāsitodbhrāntabhāṣkūṭavikaṭapucchacchāṭāvyādhūtavikacakamalakhaṇḍavigalitamakarandabindusandohasurabhitasalilayā*, 'whose waters were fragrant by the many drops of juice fallen from the fragments of full-blown lotuses shaken by many a monstrous tail of fish scared by the notes, indistinct through passion, of the geese and herons.' It is clear that this is an utter abuse of language.¹ The work would indeed be unreadable, were it not for the care taken by the author to vary his long compounds by occasional short words in order to permit the reader to breathe and gain some comprehension of what has gone before, and notably in occasional short dialogue passages, as when he describes the talk of lovers at night, he realizes the necessity of the use of short sentences. But if his tale is of the genus Kathā, he does his best by length of compounds to establish the falsity of the suggestion of Ānandavardhana² that the compounds of Ākhyāyikās can be longer than those of the Kathā.

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¹ Cf. Peterson's denunciation of the 'graceless string of extravagant and indecent puns'. Martial has equally been too freely censured for indecency, e. g. Teuffel-Schwabe, *Hist. Rom. Lit.*, § 322. 5.

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² *Dhvanyāloka*, pp. 143 ff., cf. 134 ff.

6. Bāṇa's Life and Works

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Bāṇa has most fortunately preserved for us some account of his fame by giving up the first two and a half chapters of his *Harṣacarita* to an account of himself and his family. He was a Brahmin of the Vātsyāyanas, whose mythical origin he depicts in detail; his great-grandfather Pāçupata had a son Arthapati who had eleven sons, of whom Citrabhānu married the Brahmin lady Rājyadēvī and had as son Bāṇa. His mother died young, and his father brought him up with tender care until, after his initiation at the age of fourteen, he died untimely; the history of this part of his life is hinted at in the touching picture at the beginning of the *Kādambarī* of the fate of the young parrot. After his father's death Bāṇa mixed, it is clear, in dubious company, though in part it was literary, including a poet in the vernacular (*bhāṣākavi*), Īçāna, the Prākrit poet Vāyuvikāra, two panegyrists, a painter, two singers, a music teacher, an actor, a Çaiwa devotee, a Jain monk, a Brahmin mendicant, and many others. A fit of wandering seized him and he went far, acquiring evil repute in abundance. But by consorting with the wise and the good he claims to have redeemed a misspent youth, and finally returned to his home at Prītikūṭa. When there he received a royal summons through Kṛṣṇa, brother of Harṣavardhana, who as a friend warned him to make his peace with the king—which suggests that Bāṇa had been engaged in something worse than sowing wild oats. At any rate he went to the royal camp, and was received with marked coldness even according to his own account by the king, but shortly afterwards received the royal favour. That is all we know definitely of his fate in life. He proceeds to tell us that he recited the *Harṣacarita* because on a visit home he was asked to speak of the great king, but the story is unfinished, and what is more striking, the *Kādambarī* also is incomplete, though an end was made for it by his son Bhūṣaṇa Bhaṭṭa or Bhaṭṭa Pulina, who states that he did so because regret was felt at the incomplete condition of the work. It is by no means clear which of the two works really was written first, though there is a good deal to be said for the priority of the *Harṣacarita*. We may, however, believe that there was much touching-up of either tale during Bāṇa's lifetime.

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Of Bāṇa's date we are approximately certain; he must have been fairly young when Harṣavardhana in his greatness patronized him, and we have no reason to suppose that he first became acquainted with the king early in his reign.¹ It is assumed in the *Harṣacarita* that the king disposed of his enemy, the Gauḍa king, and as reference is made to the king's vow to assume the garb of a Buddhist mendicant when he has punished his brother's murder, we may assume that Bāṇa was well aware of the Buddhist sentiments which Hiuen Tsang so fully records. We may hold, therefore, that Bāṇa wrote late in his reign, which ended in 647, and this is borne out by his mention of the *Vāsavadattā*, which he clearly imitated. Of the legend which makes him a son-in-law of the poet Mayūra we can find no confirmation in his narrative, for among his associates he merely mentions a snake-doctor Mayūraka, and it would be amazing if he really passed over without allusion his being his father-in-law. He was, it will be seen, a Brahmin of pure race, of means, and royal favour, but he was clearly far from bigoted; he presents to us abundant and detailed proof of the amity in which Buddhists and very many kinds of Hindu sectaries lived together, discussing and disputing, but without the rancour which the Chinese pilgrim's reports suggest sometimes showed itself against the Buddhists.

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¹ This is assumed by all who ascribe Bāṇa to *c.* A. D. 620. We cannot even say that he did not know of Pulakeçin's interruption of Harṣa's joy, recorded in an inscription of some poetic merit; EHI. p. 353.

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Besides his two romances, Bāṇa is credited with the *Caṇḍīçataka* and with the play *Pārvatīpariṇaya*. The feebleness of that work both in construction and style might have deterred critics from accepting the attribution, and in point of fact it is clear that it was the production of Vāmana Bhaṭṭa Bāṇa in the fifteenth century.² The ascription of the *Ratnāvalī* to him is also merely an idle surmise, for the limited imagination and restrained diction of the author of that piece are wholly unlike the over-fertile conception of Bāṇa and his amazing command of words. Later tradition recognized in him the poet who received, indeed, rich rewards from his royal patron, but whose picture of the king lived on for ever, long after the elephants and the jewels given to the singer had passed into nothingness.¹

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² R. Schmidt, AKM. xiii. 4 (1917). He wrote a *Nalābhyudaya* (TSS. 3, 1913) and the romance, imitating Bāṇa, *Vemabhūpālacarita*.

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¹ Soḍḍhala, *Udayasundarīkathā*, p. 2; *Kāvyaprakāça*, i. 2; *Subhāṣitāvali*, 150.

7. The Harṣacarita

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Bāṇa opens the *Harṣacarita*² by a brief summary in verse of the models in poetry whom he admired, the author of the *Bhārata*, the writer of *Vāsavadattā*, the prose of Haricandra—to us merely a name, Sātavāhana's treasure of song, the poem of Pravarasena, doubtless the *Setubandha* in Prākrit, Bhāsa's plays, Kālidāsa's flowers of speech, honey-sweet, and the *Bṛhatkathā*. He records the love of the north for plays on words, of the west for sense, of the south for poetical fancy, Utprekṣā, and of Gauḍa for pomp of syllables, and admits that it is hard to combine, what he evidently holds as ideal, a fresh subject-matter, a diction not common, double meanings obtained without forcing, a dominant sentiment clearly expressed, richness in sonorous words. Then he pronounces his purpose in a stanza often misunderstood:³

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² Ed. NSP. 1918; trans. E. B. Cowell and F. W. Thomas, London, 1897; ed. A. Führer, BSS. 1909; P. V. Kane, Bombay, 1918; S. D. and A. B. Gajendragadkar, Poona, 1919.

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³ Nobel (*Indian Poetry*, p. 179) still talks of Āḍhyarāja's *Utsāha*. Pischel (GN. 1901, pp. 485–7) first recognized him as Harṣa.

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*Āḍhyarājakṛtotsāhair hṛdayasthaiḥ smṛtair api*
*jihvāntaḥ kṛṣyamāṇeva na kavitve pravartate.*

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‘The mighty deeds of my great king, which fill my heart though remembered only, restrain my tongue and forbid it to proceed to the poet's task.’ This seems a clear intimation that he is to celebrate deeds of Harṣa which he heard of from others, but which none the less filled so fully his heart as almost to prevent utterance.

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Bāṇa then proceeds in chapter i to relate the descent of his family and his own life to the end of his rash youth. Chapter ii carries us no further than the reception of the message and his journey to the royal camp, where he sees and admires so fully the points of the king's great steed that he can hardly exceed his accomplishment of hyperbole in his description of Harṣa himself. Chapter iii relates how Bāṇa, on a visit home, received entreaties to tell of the king and how he complied. A long description of Sthāṇvīçvara, the capital of the race whence the king sprang, leads up to a eulogy of a mythical king Puṣpabhūti and an elaborate description of his friend and associate in adventure, Bhairavācārya. In chapter iv, after a vague allusion to the glorious kings sprung from Puṣpabhūti, we are abruptly carried to Prabhākaravardhana, whose great deeds are lightly alluded to, while the stress of the tale deals first with the queen's behaviour during the time when her first child was yet unborn, the mirth and wild revelry in the city when Rājyavardhana was born, the births of Harṣa and his sister Rājyaçrī, and the wedding of the latter to the Maukhari Grahavarman, evidently an event of great political importance to the family. With great skill, on this picture of happy wedlock and joyful celebration of a glad event follows a chapter of unrelieved tragedy. Rājyavardhana is bidden attack the Hūṇas and departs with his great host;

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