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A History of Sanskrit Literature c21.s6: 6. Bāṇa's Life and Works

A History of Sanskrit Literature c21.s6

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English

6. Bāṇa's Life and Works

c21.s6.1

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.

c21.s6.2

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.

c21.s6.3

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.

c21.s6.4

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

c21.s6.5

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

c21.s6.6

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

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