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A History of Sanskrit Literature c21.s5: 5. The Vāsavadattā

A History of Sanskrit Literature c21.s5

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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.

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