A History of Sanskrit Literature c21.s8.1

Language: English

c21.s8.1.1

The *Harṣacarita* ranks as an Ākhyāyikā, and in fact it has been adopted as the model of that form by later writers on poetics such as Rājaçekhara. It is divided into Ucchvāsas, contains occasional verses, and if not narrated by the hero, Harṣa, is at least narrated by the sub-hero, Bāṇa himself, whose history takes up the first two and a half chapters. The *Kādambarī*, on the other hand, is a Kathā, and it lacks the distinctive marks of the Ākhyāyikā. In point of fact it has a complex structure of its own, for it consists of a long narrative in which are interwoven other narratives given by characters of the work. In a sense, therefore, if it were worth while seeking to fix terminology in a manner which was unknown to Indian writers, a Kathā might be deemed² a complex Ākhyāyikā, one in which a main narrative was the mode in which sub-narratives came to be set forth in due place. The essence of the form of the *Kādambarī* is the use of these sub-narratives to explain matters which the main narrator could not himself know; he does not gather all his information into a whole and set it out in an ordered fashion, but he allows us to have it as the matters came to the knowledge of his hero during the course of his actual experience. This is a definite and marked plan which makes the *Kādambarī* in point of structure very different from the *Daçakumāracarita* or a text like the *Pañcatantra*, in which sub-narratives are included.

c21.s8.1.2

It may originally have been the plan of the *Bṛhatkathā* as Guṇāḍhya conceived it, though that characteristic is lost in the versions which have come down to us, and in any case it is very dubious if the same plan were ever systematically carried out in that work. But it is interesting to note how, in the *Kādambarī* and probably in the *Bṛhatkathā* tale whence the story is largely derived, we find the highest perfection of a manner beloved in India, the inclusion of one tale within another. In the logically simplest form we have it in the Jātaka style where a tale of old is led up to by a tale of to-day, and the story ends with the application to to-day of the legend of the past. In such works as the *Vetālapañcaviṃçatikā* there is a closer approach to the *Kādambarī* inasmuch as the tales of the Vampire are all connected with the main purpose of the king, and thus, though distinct in themselves, serve to help on one main purpose. In the *Pañcatantra* we reach a further improvement, for the stories, in themselves unconnected and many told to illustrate principles, are put in the mouths of the characters of the frame story, or in the case of narratives included in subordinate stories in the mouths of the persons of the latter.

c21.s8.1.3

Yet a closer approach is achieved in the *Daçakumāracarita* in so far as the princes each narrate their own experiences, thus introducing a degree of life which is wanting in the other forms, for in the Jātakas, though the Bodhisattva tells a tale of what was really his past experience, it is not narrated in the first person. As the idea of the *Daçakumāracarita* is doubtless borrowed from the *Bṛhatkathā*, we have an additional proof of the free use there of this device of first-hand narrative which is still further developed in the *Kādambarī*,¹ because the whole of the tales told are essentially part of one complex action, unlike those of the princes of the romance of Daṇḍin. But in one respect there is more semblance of realism in the *Daçakumāracarita*; the *Kādambarī* places its main narrative in effect in the mouth of the sage Jābāli, who knows by his great insight the tale he relates; he places himself largely at the point of view of the hero Candrāpīḍa, but that prince is not actually the narrator. The adoption of this device had already taken place in the *Bṛhatkathā*, where we find a close parallel in substance and form to the *Kādambarī* in the tale of king Sumanas. Doubtless both Somadeva and Kṣemendra may have been influenced by Bāṇa's work, and the latter certainly was, but there is no ground whatever to suspect that the Kashmirian compilers borrowed the tale from Bāṇa.

c21.s8.1.4

In every respect the relation between what we can reconstruct as the original and Bāṇa is that of development and elaboration in the romance.