A HISTORY OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE
CLASSICAL PERIOD
VOL. I
General Editor and
Contributors to this Volume:
S. N. DASGUPTA
and
S. K. DE,
AsVAGHOSA AND HIS SCHOOL 73
t he work pays respect to the
Sarvastivadins, from whom the
Sautrantikas originated, or
that some of its stories can be traced
in the works of the school. In
two stories (nos. 14 and 31),
Kaniska appears as a king who
has already passed away ; the
work, apparently written some
time after Kaniska's death,
cannot, therefore, be dated
earlier than the 2nd century A.D. 1
The three works, which are
known for certain to be Asvaghosa's,
are : the Bnddha-carita, the
Saundarananda and the
Sariputra-prakarana ; and his
fame as a great Sanskrit poet rests
entirely on these. The first,
in its original form of twenty-eight
cantos, known to Yi-tsing and
to the Chinese and Tibetan versions,
is a complete Mahakavya on the
life of the Buddha, which begins
with his birth and closes with
an account of the war over the
relics, the first Council, and
the reign of A^oka. In Sanskrit 2
only cantos two to thirteen
exist in their entirety, together with
about three quarters of the
first and the first quarter ot the fourteenth
(up to st. 31), carrying the
narrative down to the Buddha's
temptation, defeat of Mara and
his enlightenment. It is the
work of a real poet who,
actuated by intense devotion to the
Buddha and the truth ol! his
doctrine, has studied the scripture
and is careful to use the
authoritative sources open to him, but
who has no special inclination
to the marvellous and the miraculous,
and reduces the earlier
extravagant and chaotic legends to
the measure and form of the
Kfivya. Asvaghosa does not depart in
1
If, however, Harivarman, a
pupil of Kumaralata, was a contemporary of Vasubandhu,
then Kumaralata could not have
been a younger contemporary of Asvaghosa, but should be
dated not earlier than the 3rd
century A D.
2 Ed. E. B. Cowell, Oxford
1893, containing four alditional cantos by Arartananda, a
Nepaleae Pandit of the 19th
century, win records at the end that he wrote the supplement in
1830 A. D., because he could
not find a complete manuscript of the te*t. Also trs. into
English by Cowell in SBE, vol.
49; into German by C. Cappeller, .lena 1922; into Italian by
C Fonnichi, Bari 1912.
Re-edited more critically, and translated into English, by E. H
Johnston in 2 vols., Calcutt t
1936 (Panjab Ooiv. Orient. Publ. Nos. 31-32), which may be
consulted for bibliography of
other Indian editions and for critical and exegetical contributions
to the subject by various
scholars. Johnston remarks : "The textual tradition of the extant
portion is bad, and a sound
edition is only made possible by comparison with the Tibetan and
Chinese translations."
The Tibetan text, with German translation, under the title Da* Ltben
des Buddha von Ahagliosa, is
given by F. Weller, in two parts, Leipzig 1926, 1928,
10-1343B
essentials from the received
tradition, but he succeeds in infusing
into his well conceived and
vivid narrative the depth of his religious
feeling and the spontaneity of
his poetic emotion. Not unworthily
praised is the skilful picture
he draws of the young prince
Sarvarthasiddhi's journey
through the city, of the throng of fair
women who hasten to watch him
pass by, of the hateful spectacle
of disease, old age and death
which he encounters on the way, of
the womanly blandishments and
the political arguments of
wisdom set forth by the family
priest, which seek to divert the
prince's mind from brooding
thoughts of resignation, as well as
of the famous night-scene of
sleeping women, who in their
moment of unconsciousness
present all the loathsome signs of
human misery and thereby
hasten the flight of the prince from
the palace. The requirement of
a battle-scene in the Kavya is
fulfilled by the pleasing
variation of the spirited description of the
Buddha's fight with Mara and
his hosts. 1 The work is, therefore,
not a bare recital of
incident, nor is it a dry and dogmatic
exposition of Buddhist
doctrine, but the Buddha-legend is conceived
in the spirit of the Kavya in
respect of narrative, diction
and imagery, and the poet's
flame of faith makes the best lines of
the poem quiver with the
needed glow.
The Saundarananda2
, all the eighteen cantos of
which are
preserved in Sanskrit, is
connected also with the story of the
Buddha; but its actual theme
is the conversion of his reluctant
half-brother, Nanda, nicknamed
Sundara for his handsome
appearance. Nothing more than
a mention of the fact of
1 Parallelisms between
As*vaghosa and Kalid&sa in some of these passages, not only in
ideas but also in diction and
imagery, have been set forth in detail in Nandargikar's introduction
to bis edition of Raghu-varnsa
(3rd ed,, Bombay 1897, pp. 163-96) ; but the argument based
thereon that Kalidasa was
earlier and As*vaghosa imitated him has not found general support
and is very unlikely.
2 Discovered and edited by
Haraprasad Shastri, Bibl. Ind., Calcutta 1910; critically
re-edited and translated into
English by E. H Johnston, Oxford Univ. Press, 1928, 1932
which gives full bibliography.
In spite of the richer content and wider interest of the
Buddha-carita, Johnston is of
opinion that
"
the handling of the
Saundarananda is altogether
more mature and assured than
that of the Buddha-carita
"
; Contra Winternitz, ffIL, IJ,
p. 262 note,
AHVAGHOSA AND HIS SCHOOL 75
conversion is found in the
Maharayga and the Nidana-katha ;
and the subject is perhaps too
slender to support an extensive
poem. But the opportunity is
taken, in the earlier part of the
poem, to expand the legend
with the proper Kavya-embellishments,
and in the latter part, to
give expression at length to the
poet's religious ideas and
convictions. The first six cantos,
therefore, describe the
mythical foundation of Kapilavastu, its
king, the birth of the Buddha
and Nanda, the lutter's love for
his wife Sundarl, the forcible
conversion of Nanda to the life of
a monk, which he intensely
dislikes, his conflict of feelings, and
Sundari's lament for her lost
husband. All this is pictured
skilfully in the manner and
diction of the Kavya, and possesses
considerable narrative
interest ; but in the rest of the poem
there is not much of
description or narration except the account
of Nanda's ascent to heaven
and yearning for Apsarases. Entire
space is, therefore, devoted
to an impassioned exposition of the
evils of pride and lust, the
vanities of the world and the joys of
enlightenment. Here, more than
in the imaginative presentation
of the Buddha-legend,
Asvaghosa the preacher, no doubt,
gets the upper hand of
Asvaghosa the poet ; but in this very
conflict between his poetic
temperament and religious passion,
which finds delight in all
that is delightful and yet discards it
as empty and unsatisfying,
lies the secret of the spontaneity and
forcefulness which forms the
real appeal of his. poetry. It
is not merely the zeal of the
convert but the conviction of the
importance of what he has to
say that often makes him scorn
mere verbal polish and learned
ostentation and speak with an
overmastering directness, the
very truth and enthusiasm of which
sharpen his gift of pointed
phrasing, balance his sentences and
add a new zest to his
emotional earnestness.
In this respect Asvaghosa's
poetry lacks the technical finish
and subtlety of the later
Kavya ; but it possesses freshness of
feeling in the simplicity and
nobility born of passionate faith.
Asvaghosa is fully conversant
with the Brahman ical atid Buddhistic
learning of his day, while his
metrical skill and use of
76 HISTORY OF SANS KBIT
LltERATt) ftfi
rhetorical ornaments betoken
his familiarity with the poetic art1
;
but the inherent contrast
between the poet and the artist, on the
one handj and the scholar and
the preacher, on the other, often
results in strange inequalities
of matter and manner. At the
conclusion of his poems,
Agvaghosa declares that he is writing
for a larger public, and not
merely for a learned audience, for
the attainment of peace and
not for the display of skill in the
Kavya. The question,
therefore, whether he belongs to this
or that school of thought, or
whether he employs this or that
metre or ornament in his poems
is immaterial ; what is material
to recognise is that religion
is not his theme, but religious
emotion, which supplies the
necessary impetus and evolves its
own form of expression without
making a fetish of mere rhetoric
or mere dogma. ASvagbosa is a
poet by nature, a highly
cultivated man by training,
and a deeply religious devotee by
conviction. This unique
combination is often real and vital
enough to lift his poetry from
the dead level of the commonplace
and the conventional, and
impart to it a genuine emotional tone
which is rare in later poetry.
What is most pleasing in his
work to modern taste is his
power of combining a sense of reality
and poetry with the skill of
art and scholarship. His narrative,
therefore^ is never dull, his
choice of incident and arrangement
never incoherent, his diction
seldom laboured and his
expression rarely devoid of
elegant simplicity. If he is not a
finished artist in the sense
in which his successors are, nor even
a great poet capable of great
things, his poetic inspiration is
genuine, and he never speaks
in a tiresome falsetto. If his poetry
has not the stress and
discipline of chiselled beauty, it has the
pliability and promise of
unrefined form ; it has the sincerity and
the throb; if not the
perfectly ordered harmony, of full-grown music.
Agvaghosa's versatility is
indicated by his third work,
2 a
Prakaraija or nine-act drama,
entitled 8ariputra-prakarana (or
1 On Asvagboa as scholar and
artist, see Johnston, op. eft., pt. II, pp- xliv-lxxix.
* H. Liiders, D<ia
Sftriputraprakaran>, ein Drama .des A6vagho^, in Sitzungsberichtc
d Berliner Akad., 1911, p. 388
f.
ASVAGHOSA AND HIS SCHOOL 77
3aradvatiputra), of which only
fragments on palm leaf were
discovered in Central Asia and
a few passages restored by
Liiders. Fortunately the
colophon exists, and the question of
authorship and name of the
work is beyond doubt. Its theme
is, again, an act of
conversion connected with the Buddha,
namely, that of Sariputra and
Maudgalyayana, but the fragments
give us little idea of the way
in which the story, well-known
from such older sources as the
Mahavagya, was handled, in
having a Prakrit-speaking
Vidusaka as one of the characters and
in conforming to the
requirements regarding division into acts,
use of literary Prakrits,
1 ornamental metrical
excursions 2 and other
details, the fragments,
however, afford clear testimony that
the method and technique of a
fairly developed Sanskrit
drama 3 were already
established in the 1st or 2nd century A.D.
This presumption is confirmed
a-lso by the fragments of two
other , plays,
4 which were discovered with
the remains of
tSariputra-prakarana, but
which bear no testimony of authorship and
may or may not have been
written by ^Tsvaghosa. The first has
for its theme a Buddhist
allegory, of which the details are not
clear, although a whole leaf
of the manuscript has been recovered.
It has Kirti 'Fame/ Dhrti '
Firmness' and Buddhi ' Wisdom '
as characters, and apparently
foreshadows such allegorical plays
as Krsnamisra's
Prabodha-candrodaya of a much later time.
The Buddha himself appears, as
in the drama described above,
and all the characters, so far
as the fragments go, speak
Sanskrit. In having real, as
well as allegorical, figures, it
1 On the Prakrits employed in
this and the following plays, see Liiders in the works
cited, and Keith, HSL, pp.
85-89. The Prakrit ia literary and shows the influence of
Sanskrit.
3 The metres employed (besides
Sloka) are the usual classical ones ; Arya, Upajati, Salim,
VamSastbavila, Vaaantatilaka,
Malinl, Sikharinl, Harinf, Suvadanft, Sardulavikrujita and
Sragdhara.
8 Contra Sten Konow, Indische
Drama, Berlin and Leipzig 1920, p. 50, but the
grounds are weak.
4 H. Liiders, Bruchstticke
buddhisHscher Dramen, Kongl. Preuss. Turfan-Expentionen,
Kleinere Sanskrit-Texte I,
Berlin 1911, The questiot of authorship is undecided ;
see Johnston, op. cit., pp.
xx-xxii.
8 HlSlmV Ol? SANSKRIT
resembles more the Caitanya-candrodaya
of Kavikarnapura in
its manner of treatment, but
no definite conclusion is possible.
The other play appears to have
been al&o intended for religious
edification, but from what
remains of it we may infer that it
was a social drama of middle class
life of the type of the
MTCchakatika. It concerns a
young voluptuary, called simply
the Nayaka and probably named
Somadatta, and his mistress
Magadhavati, apparently a
courtesan converted to Buddhism.
There are also a Prince
(Bhattidalaka), an ever-hungry Vidusaka,
named Kaumudagandha, a
maid-servant, and a Dusta or Rogue.
The fragments are few in
number and not consecutive, and it
is difficult to make out the
story. But in view of the uncertainty
of the origin and antiquity of
the Sanskrit Drama, these
specimens, which belong
probably to the same age, are highly
interesting ; for they reveal
the drama in its first appearance in a
relatively perfected form, and
clearly indicate that its origin
should antedate the Christian
era.
From the literary point of
view, A^vaghosa's achievement,
we have seen, is marked not so
much by crudity and primitiveness
as by simplicity and
moderation in language and style;
it is artistic but not in the
extravagant manner of the later
Kavya. Its matter and poetic
quality, therefore, are more
appealing than its manner and
artistic effect. This is certainly
different from the later taste
and standard of verse-making ; and
it is not surprising that with
the exception of Kalidasa, who is
nearer his time, Agvaghosa
exercised little influence on later
Sanskrit poets,
1
although the exception itself
is a sure indication
of the essential quality of
his literary effort. Despite their
religious zeal, the literary
works of Asvaghosa could not have
been approved whole-heartedly
also by the learned monks for his
freedom of views and leaning
towards Brahmanical learning.
1 The only quotation from
ASveghosa in Alarpkara literature occur? in
nw5i td. Qaekwad's 0. 8., p.
18 (**Buddha>c. viii. 25), For other
see Johnston, op. cit., pp.
Ixxix-lxxx, abd F. W. Thomas* Kts, intrpd., p. 29.
AVAGHOA AND HIS SCHOOL 79
With the Buddhist writers of
the Kavya, on the other hand,
A^vaghosa was deservedly
popular ; and some of their works were
modelled so closely on those
of A^vaghosa that they were
indiscriminately assigned to
him in later times, with the result
that the authors themselves
came to be identified with him. 1
Of the successors of
Asvaghosa, who are to be taken into
account, not because they were
Buddhists but because their
works possess a wider literary
appeal, we have already spoken of
Kumaralata, one of whose works
is ascribed by the Chinese tradition
to Asvaghosa himself. Some of
the poems
2 of Matrceta
have likewise .been attributed
to Avaghosa by the Tibetan
tradition, one of whose famous
chroniclers, Taranatba being of
opinion that Matrceta is
another name for Asvaghosa ! Of the
twelve works ascribed to
Matrceta in Tibetan and one in Chinese,
most of which are in the
nature of Stotras and some belonging
distinctly to Mahayana, only
fragments of $atapancaatka-stotra*
and Catuhhtaka-stotraf or
panegyric of one hundred and fifty
and four hundred stanzas
respectively, are recovered in Sanskrit.
Botlr these works are simple
devotional poems in Slokas. T hey are
praised by Yi-tsing, to whom
Matrceta is already a famous poet,
and who himself is said to
have translated the first work into
Chinese ; but they do not
appear to possess much literary merit.
That Matrceta, in spite of his
name occurring distinctly in
Yi-tsing and in the
inscriptions, was confused with Asvaghosa,
may have been due to the fact
that he belonged to the same school
and was probably a
contemporary. A Tibetan version of another
1 Concerning the
identifications, see P. W. Thomas in Album Kern, Leiden 1903,
pp. 405-08 and IA t 1903, pp
345-60; also see ERE, VIII (1915), p. 495f.
2 For a list of the works see
F. W, Thomas, Kvs, introd., pp. 26-28.
3 Fragments published by S.
Le*vi in JA, XVI, 1910, pp. 438-56 and L. de la Valtee
Pousain in JRAS, 1911, pp.
769-77. Siegiing is reported to have reconstructed about two-thirds
of the Sanskrit text; see
Winternitz, H/L, II, p. 271 note. Both these works exist in Tibetan
and Chinese.
4 The work is called
Varnan&rha-varnana in the Tibetan version and Central Asian
fragments, For a translation of
this text from Tibetan, see F, W. Thomas in IA f XXVIV,
1905 f pp. 145463.
work, called
Maharaja-kanika-lekha, in eighty-five stanzas,
ascribed to Matrcitra, has
been translated into English by P. W.
Thomas, 1 who is probably
right in thinking that Matrcitra is
identical with Matrceta, and
that king Kanika 'of the Kusa
dynasty addressed in this
epistle of religious admonition is no
other than the Kusana king
Kaniska. 2
Of greater interest than the
rather meagre works of
Matrceta is the Jataka-mala*
of Arya Sura, which consists of
a free but elegant Sanskrit
rendering, in prose and verse, of
thirty-four
4 selected legends from the
Pali Jdtakas and the
^Gariyii-pitaka, illustrating
the Paramitas or perfections of a
Bodhisattva. Although
sometimes marked by exaggeration, the
tales are edifying. They were
apparently composed for supplying
ready illustrations to
religious discourses, but the interest is
more than religious. The work
reveals a close study of
A^vaghosi's manner, and is
inspired by the same idea of conveying
in polished, but not too
highly artificial, diction the noble
doctrine of universal
compassion ; and it is not surprising, therefore,
that the author should be
identified sometimes with Asvaghosa.
The attractive form in which
the old stories are retold in
the Kavya-style slows that it
was meant for a wider but cultivated
audience, and we have
Yi-tsing's testimony, confirmed by the
existence of Chinese and
Tibetan translations, that the work was
at one time popular in India
and outside. Arya Sura's date is
unknown, but as another work
of his 5 was translated into
1
7/1, XXII, 1903, p. 345 f. The
epistle ia supposed to be Matrcitra's reply declining
king Kamka's invitation to bis
court. The vogue of such epistolary exhortation ia borne out
by Nagarjuna's Suhfllekha and
Candragomin's Sisya-lehha.
2 But contra 8. C. Vidyabhugan
iu JASB, 1910, p. 477 f.
3 Ed. H. Kern in Harvard 0.
S., 1801; trs. J S. Speyer in Sacred Books of the
Buddhists, Oxford University
Press, 1895. The title is a generic term, for various poets have
written
'
garlands
*
of Jatakas.
4 The Chinese version contains
only 14 stories.
For a list of other works
ascribed to Xrya Sura by Chinese and Tibetan traditions,
see F. W. Thomas, Kvs,
introd., p. 26 f.
AVADINA LITERATURE 81*
Chinese in 434 AD., he cannot
be dated later than the 4th
century A.D. 1
2. THE AVADINA LITERATURE
Closely connected with the
Jataka-mala, which is also
entitled
Bodhisattvavadana-mala, are the works belonging to
what is called the Avadana
literature ; for the Jataka is nothing
more than an Avadana (Pali
Apadana) or tale of great deed, the
hero of which is the
Bodhisattva himself. Their matter sometimes
coincides, and actual Jataka
stories are contained in the
Avadana works. 2 The absorbing
theme of the Avadanas being
the illustration of the fruit
of man's action, they have a moral
end in view, but the rigour of
the Karman doctrine is palliated
by a frank belief in the
efficacy of personal devotion to the
Buddha or his followers. The tales
are sometimes put, as in the
Jataka, in the form of
narration by the Buddha himself, of a past,
present or future incident ;
and moral exhortations, miracles and
exaggerations come in as a
matter of course. As literary productions
they are hardly commendable,
but their historical interest
is considerable as affording
illustration of a peculiar type of
story-telling in Sanskrit.
The oldest of these
collections is perhaps the Avadanatataka,*
which is well known from some
of its interesting
narratives, but its literary
merit is not high. The tales are
arranged schematically, but
not on a well conceived plan,
1 into
1 We do not take here into
account the works of other and later Buddhist writeis,
such as the Catuh-tatalta of
Sryadeya, the Suhrllekha of Nagarjuna, the Sisya-lekha and
Lokananda-nataka of
Candragoroin, or the Bodhicaryavat&ra of Santideva, for they contribute
more to doctrine or philosophy
than to literature.
2 See Serge d'Oldenberg in
JRAS, 1898, p. 304; and for Avadaoa literature in
general, see L. Feer's series
of articles in JA between 1578 and 1884, and introd. to his
translation of the
Avadana-tataka.
3 Ed. J. 8. Speyer, BibJ.
Buddh., St. Petersburg 1902-09; trs. into French by
L. Peer in Annale9 du Must*
Guimet, Paris 1891. An earlier but lost Asok&vadana was
composed, according to
Przyluski, by a Mathurft monk about two centuries before Ktniska.
U-1348B
,82 HISTORY OF SANSKRIT
LITERATURE
ten decades, each dealing with
a certain, subject, and are told
with set formulas, phrases and
situations. The first four decades
deal with stories of pious
deeds by which one can become a
Buddha, and include prophecies
of the advent of the Buddhas ;
while the fifth, speaking of
the world of souls in torments,
narrates the causes of their
suffering with a tale and a lesson in
morality. The next decade
relates stories of men and animals
V
reborn as gods, while the last
four decades are concerned with
deeds which qualify persons to
become Arhats. The legends
are often prolix, and there is
more of didactic than literary
motive in the narration. The
date of the work is uncertain, but
while the mention of the
Dlnara as a current coin (Roman
Denarius) is supposed to
indicate 100 A.D. as the upper limit,
the lower limit is supplied
more convincingly by its translation
into Chinese in the first half
of the 3rd century.
Hardly more interesting from
the literary point of view is
the Divyavadana,
1 the date of which is also
uncertain, but
which, making extensive use of
Kumaralata's work, cannot be
earlier than the 1st century
A.D. It is substantially a Hinayfma
text, but Mahayana material
has been traced in it. Being
probably a compilation of
polygenotis origin, extending over
different periods of time, its
matter and manner are unequal.
The prose is frequently
interrupted by Gathas and pieces of
ornate stanzas, but this is a
feature which is shown by other
works of this type. The
language is reasonably correct and
simple ; but debased Sanskrit,
marked by Prakritisms, is not
absent, and the diction is
sometimes laboured and ornamental.
We have here some really
interesting and valuable narratives,
specially the cycle of A^oka
legends, but they are scarcely well
told ; the arrangement is
haphazard and chaotic ; and the work
as a whole possesses little
literary distinction. 2
1 Ed. B. B. Cowell and R. A.
NeifiT Cambridge 1886. Almost all the stories Lave
been traced to other works.
1 For other collections of
unpublished Avadftnts, see- Speyer and Peer, in the work*
aitcd, tnd Winternitz, H/L,
II, pp. 290-92,
tAJ.K AND FABtK 83
To the first century of the
Christian era probably nlso
belongs some parts of the
Mahavastu, 1 the ' Book of Great
Events,' even if its
substantial nucleus probably took shape in
an earlier period. Although
its subject is Vinaya, it contains,
besides the life-story of the
Buddha, some narratives of the
Jataka and Avadana type ; but
in its jumbling of confused and
disconnected matter and for
its hardly attractive style, it has small
literary, compared with its
historical, interest. The same remark
applies more or less to the
Lalita-vistara,
2 the detailed account
of the '
sport
'
of the Buddha, the date of
which is unknown
and origin diverse. Whatever
may be its value as a biography
of the Buddha, its style is
not unlike that of the Puranas. The
narrative in 'simple but
undistinguished Sanskrit prose is often
interrupted by long metrical
passages in mixed Sanskrit, and
its literary pretensions are
not of a high order.
3. THE LITERATURE OF TALE AND
FABLE
The Buddhist anecdotal
literature perhaps reflects an aspect
of the literary, us well as
popular, taste of the time, which liked
the telling of tales in a
simple and unadorned, but distinctly
elegant, manner ; for the
origin of the Sanskrit Pancatanlra and
the Prakrit Brhatkatha, which
represent story-telling from
another point of view, is
perhaps synchronous, although
the various extant versions of
the two works belong to a much
later period. The Avadana, the
didactic beast-fable and the
popular tale are indeed not
synonymous. While the Avadana,
closely related to the Jataka,
is clearly distinguishable as a
Buddhist gest, which has a
definite religious significance, the
other two species are purely
secular in object and character.
The method of story-telling is
also different ; for in the Jataka
or Avadana, we have
..generally the application of a past legend
1 Ed. E. Smart, 8 vols, Paris
1882-97, \vitb detailed summary of contents and Dotes.
2 Ed. Rajendralal Mitra, Bibl.
lad,, Calcutta
1877 ; English Irs. by same
(up to cb,
xv), Bibl. Ind. 1881-86;
re-edited by 8. Lefmunn, Halle 1902, 1S08; complete French trs
by P. B. Fouoa-u i \ Annales
da Muste Guimef, Paris 1884, 1892.
8i HISTORY OF SANSKRIT
LITERATURE
to a tale of to-day. In the
Jataka the Bodhisattva tells a tale
of his past experience, but it
is not narrated in the first person ;
the device of first-hand
narrative, as well as of enclosing a tale^
is a feature which
characterises the classical method. The
Sanskrit poetic theory ignores
the Jataka and Avadana, presumably
because they have a religious
objective and seldom rises
to the level of art, but it
does not also clearly define and discriminate
between the fable and the
tale. The elaborate attempt
to distinguish between the
Katha and the Akhyayika,
1 as the
invented story and the
traditional legend respectively, is more
or less academic, and has
hardly any application to the present
case. Some of the stories of
the Pancatantra are indeed called
Kathas, but one of the
versions of the entire work is styled
Tantrakhyayika, while
Guijadhya's work is designated as the
Great Katha. Possibly no fine
distinction is meant, and the
terms Katha aud Akhyayika are
employed here in the general
sense of a story. A rigid
differentiation, however, cannot
perhaps be made in practice
between the fable aftd the tale ;
for the different elements in
each are not entirely excluded in
the other, nor isolated. The
beast-fable, as typified by the
PaHcatantra^ is riot seldom
enriched by folk-tale and spicy stories
of human adventure, while the
tale, as represented by the
Brhatkathd^ sometimes becomes
complex by absorbing some of
the elements of the fable and
its didactic motive. Both these
types^ again^ should be
distinguished from the prose romance, the
so-called Katha and Akhyayika^
such as the Harsa-carita and the
Kadambarl, in which all the
graces ard refinements of the Kavya
are transferred from verse to
prose, either to create an exuberantly
fanciful story or to vivify
and transform a legend or folk-tale.
The currency of tales and
fables of all kinds may be presumed
from remote antiquity, but
they were perhaps not used
for a definite purpose^ nor
reduced to a literary form, until
1 See S. K. De, The Katba and
the Akhyayika in Classical Sanskrit in BSOS, III,
p. 307f.- Dandin tf-28>
speaks of Xkhyana as a general species, in which collectious of tales
like the Paiicatantra were
probably included,
TALE AND FABLK 85
at a comparatively late
period. The ancestor of the popular tale
may have been sach Vedic
Akhyanas as are preserved, for instance,
in the Rgvedic dialogue-hymn
of Pururavas and UrvasI, or in
such Brahmanic legends as that
of Sunah^epa ; but it is futile
to seek the origin of the
beast-fable in the Rgvedic hymn of frogs
(vii. 103), which panegyrises
the frogs more from a magical
than didactic motive, or in
the Upanisadic parable of dogs (Gh.
Up. i. 12), which represents
the dogs as searching out a leader
to howl food for them, but
which may have been either a satire
or an allegory. Nor is there
any clear recognition of the fable
in the Epics as a distinct
literary genre, although the motifs of
the clever jackal, the naughty
cat and the greedy vulture are
employed for the purpose of
moral instruction. But all these,
as well as the Jataka device
of illustrating the virtues of
Buddhism by means of
beast-stories,
1 may have suggested the
material out of which the
full-fledged beast-fable developed in
the Pancatantra. In its
perfected form, it differed from the
simple parable or the mere
tale about beasts, in having the
latent didactic motive clearly
and deliberately brought out and
artistically conveyed in a
definite framework and a connected
grouping of clever stories, in
which the thoughts and deeds of
men are ascribed to animals.
There is nothing simple or
popular in such a form ; and
the beast-fable as an independent
literary creation diverged
considerably in this respect
from the popular tale, which
is free from didactic presentation
and in which the more or less
simple ideas of the
people and their belief in
myth and magic, as well as racy
stories of human life, find a
direct expression. In the case
of beast-fable, again, the
connexion with the courts of princes is
clearer. The popular tale, no
doubt, speaks of romantic prince
and princess of a fairy land ;
but the framework of collection of
beast-fables like the
Paftcatantra, which is delivered in the form of
1 The Barhut Stupa reliefs,
depicting some of the stories, establish the currency of the
beast-fable at least in the
2nd Century B.C.
SO lUSlOKY OK SANSKIUT
M'i'BKATUHK
instruction to tender- minded
young princes in statecraft and
practical morality, leaves no
doubt about one form of its employment.
It is thus closely related to
the Niti-^astra and Arthafiastra,
1 but it is not directly
opposed to the Dharma-^astra. The
fact is important ; for even
if the beast-fable inculcates political
wisdom or expediency in the
practical affairs of life, rather than
a strict code of uprightness,
it seldom teaches cleverness at the
expense of morality.
2
a. The Pancatantra
The only collection of
beast-fable and the solitary surviving
work of this kind in Sanskrit
is the Pancatantra, which has come
down to us in various forms ;
but it is a work which has perhaps
a more interesting history
than any in world-literature.3 There
can be little doubt that
4 from the very beginning it
had a
deliberate literary form. Each
of its five parts, dealing respectively
with the themes of separation
of friends (Mitra-bheda),
winning of friends
(Mitra-prapti), war and peace (Samdhivigraha),
loss of one's gains
(Labdha-nasa) and hasty action
(Apariksita-karitva), is a
narrative unit in itself ; but all together
they form a perfect whole
fitted into the frame of the introduction.
1 No direct influence of
Kaulilya's Artha-xastra can be traced in the PaHcata.nl ra.
2 F. Edgerton in JAOS, XL, p.
'271 f.
3 J. Hertel (Das Paftcatantra,
seine Geschichie und seine Verbreitung, Leipzig
and Berlin, 1914, Index, p.
451 T.) records over 200 different versions of the work
known to exist in more than 50
languages (three-fourths of the languages befn?
extra-Indian) and spreading
over a region extending from Java to Iceland. For a
brief re"sum6 of this
history, as well as for a brief summary of the work, see Winternitz,
GIL, III, pp. 294-311 ; Keith,
HSL, pp. 248 f, 357 f. The question whether the individual
tales or the Indian fable
itself as a species, were borrowed, in their origin, from Greece
is much complicated.
Chronology is in favour of the priority of Greece, but the suggestion
that India consciously
borrowed from Greece is not proved. Some points of similarity may
be admitted, but they may
occur without borrowing on either side At any rate, if reciprocal
influences and exchanges
occurred, India seems to have given more than it took. Benfey's
position thnt. the tale is
entirely Indian, while the fable came from Greece, need not be discussed,
for i'olklorists to-day no
longer seek to find the bhthplaceof all tales and fublrn in
any one country.
THIS PANVATAOTRA H7
The stories are told, as in
the case of the popular tale, in
simple but elegant prose, and
there is no attempt at descriptive
or sentimental excursions or
elaborate stylistic effects. The combining
of a number of fables is also
a characteristic which it
shares with the popular tale,
but they arc not merely emboxed ;
there is, in the weaving of
disjointed stories, considerable skill in
achieving unity and
completeness of effect. The insertion of a
number of general gnomic
stanzas in the prose narrative is a
feature which is dictated by
its didactic motive ; but the tradition
is current from the time of
the Brahmanas and the Jatakas.
More interesting and novel, if
not altogether original, is the device
of conveniently summing up the
moral of the various stories in
pointed memorial stanzas,
which are not general maxims butspecial
labels to distinguish the
points of individual fables. The
suggestion
1 of a hypothetical
prose-poetic Vedic Akhyana, in
which the verse remained fixed
but the prose mysteriously dropped
out, is not applicable to the
case of the blend of prose and verse
in the fable literature ; for
the prose here can never drop out, and
the essential nature of the
stanzas is gnomic or recapitulatory,
and not dramatic or
interlocutory. There must have existed a
great deal of floating gnomic
literature in Sanskrit since the time
of the Brahmanas, which might
have been utilised for these
passages of didactic wisdom.
The Paflcatantra, however, is
not a single text, but a
sequence of texts ; it exists
in more versions than one, worked
out at different times and
places, but all diverging from a single
original text. The original,
2 which must have existed long
before
570 A.D. when the Pahlavi
version was made, is now lost ; but
neither its date nor its title
nor provenance, is known with
1 H. OJdeuberg in ZDMG,
XXXVII, p. 54 f ; XXXIX, p. 52 f ; also- in his Zur Geschichte
d. altindischen Prosa, Berlin
1917, p. 53 f and Lit. d. alien Indien, cited above, pp 44 f
125 f, ]53f.
'
2 The idea of a Prakrit
original is discredited both by Hertel and Edgerton. The
literature on the Paflcatantra
is vast and scattered, but the results of the various studies will
be found summarised in the
works, cited below, of these two scholars.
88 HISTORY OF SANSKRIT
LITERATURE
certainty. The character and
extent of the transformation, to
which the work was subjected
in course of time, make the
problem of reconstruction one
of great intricacy, but the
labours of Hertel1 and
Edgerton
2 have succeeded in a great
measure in going back to the
primary Paficatantra by a close and
detailed examination of the
various existing versions. That it
originally contained five
books with a brief introduction and was
called Paftcatantra, is now
made fairly certain, but there is a considerable
discussion of the meaning of
the word Tantra. It may
denote nothing more than a
book or its subject-matter, but since
it occurs in the title
Tantrahhyayika of one of the versions,
3
it
may indicate a text of polity
as an art. There is no evidence
at all of authorship ; for the
name Visnusarman, applied in the
introduction to the wise
Brahman who instructs, with these
stories, the ignorant sons of
king Amarasakti of Mahilaropya in
Deccan, is obviously as
fictitious as the names of the king and
the place. Hertel thinks that
the work was composed in
Kashmir, but his arguments are
inadequate ; while nothing can
be confidently inferred from
the mention of Gauda or Bsyamuka
or of well known places of
pilgrimage like Puskara, Varanasi,
Prayaga and Garigadvara.
The various important
recensions of the Pancatantra have
been classified into four main
groups,
4 which represent diversity
of tradition, but all of which
emanate from the lost original.
The first is the lost Pahlavi
version,
6 from which were derived
1 Das Paftcatantra, cited
above, as well as works and editions cited below.
* The Pancatantra
Reconstructed t Text, Critical Apparatus, Introduction and Translation,
2 vols., American Orient.
Soc., New Haven, Conn., 1924,
3 Jacobi, however, would
translate it apparently as a collection of akhyayika in tantras,
'die in bucher eingeteilte
Erzahlungssammlung.' See F. W. Thomas in JRAS, 1910, p. 1347.
4 Hertel, however, believes ia
two versions of one Kashrnirian recension only as the
archetype of the other three
recensions, namely, the Tantr&khyayika and what be calls
'E*. For a abort genealogical
table, setting forth the relationship of tfce- four main recensions
or groups, see Edgerton, op.
cit. t II, p. 48, and for a full and detailed table cf all known
versions see Penzer's Ocean of
Story', Vol. V, p. 242 (also by Edgerton).
6 Made by he physician Burzoe
under the patronage of Chosroes Anu0hTrwan
(581-79 A.D.) under* he title
Karataka and Darnanaka.
THR PASfcATANTRA 89
the old Syriac
1 and Arabic 2 versions ; and
it was through this
source that the Paficatantra,
in a somewhat modified form, was
introduced into the fable
literature of Europe. The second
is a lost North-western
recension, from which the text was
incorporated into the two
North-western (Kashmirian) Sanskrit
versions of Gunadhya's
Brhatkatha, made respectively by
Ksemendra and Somadeva (llth
century A.D.). 8 The third is
the common lost source of the
Kashmirian version, entitled
Tantrakhyayika,
4 and of the two Jaina
versions, namely, the
Simplicior Text, well known
from Biihler and Kielhorn's not
very critical edition,
6 and the much amplified
Ornatior Text,
called Paficakhyana, of
Purnabhadra (1199 A.D.).6 The fourth
is similarly the common lost
source of the Southern Paficatantra,
7
1 Made by Bud, a Persian
Christian, about 570 A.D. under the title Kalilag wa
Damnag. Ed Schulthess, Berlin
1911.
1 Made by 'Abdullah Ibnu'l-Muquffa
about 750 A.D. under the style Kallla wa
Dimna. Ed. L Cheikbo, 2nd Ed.,
Beyrouth 1923.
* Brhatkatha-maftjari xvi.
'255 f ; Hatha-sarii-sagaTa lx-!xiv. Leo von Mankowski baa
edited, with trans etc., (from
only one imperfect MS), Kseu.endra'a version separately in Der
Auszug aus dem Paftcatanlra m
Kfemendras Brhatkathamafljari, Leipzig 1892. Lacote,
Hertel and Edgerton make it
probable that the original Bfhatkatha of Gunadbya did not
contain the Paflcatanlra.
S^madeva's \ersion of the Paficatantra (accordii g to Eruenau'e
computation in JAOS, LIII,
1^33, p. 125) contains 539 Slokas, while Ksemendra's in
Mankowtki's edition , haa 806
; but deducting the stories not found in Somadeva, Ksemendra's
total would be about 270 only.
4 Ed. J. Hertel, Berlin 1910, containing
two sub-versions ; also ed. J. Hertel in
Harvard 0. 8., Cambridge Mass.
1915; tra J. Hertel, 2 vols., Leipzig and Berlin 1909.
5 Bombay Skt. Ser., 1868-69 ;
also ed. L. Kosengarten Bonn 3848 ; ed. K. P. Parab,
NSP, Bombay 1896 (revised
Parab and V. L. Panshikar 1912). J. Hertel, Uber die Jaina
Recensionen des Paficatantra
in BSGW, LIV, 1902, pp. 23-134, gives selections of text and
translation-
6 Ed J. Hertel, Harvard Orient
Ser,, Cambridge Mass., 1908-12; trs into German by
Schmidt, Leipzig 1901; into
English by A.W.Ryder, Chicago 1925. Purnabhadra uses
both the Tantrakhyayika and
the Simplicior text.
7 Ed. J. Hertel (Text of
recension 0, with variants from recension a\ Leipzig 1906;
Text of recension o, ed.
Heinrich Blatt, Leipgig 1930. See also J. Hertel, Ober einen
siidlicl.en textus amplior des
Paficatantra in ZDMG, 1906-07 (containing translation of
text). Of the Nepalese
version. Bk. i-iii are included in Hertel's ed. mentioned above, while
Bk. iy-v in his. ed. of
Tantrakhyayikd, introd., p. xxvii. Selections from the Nepalese version
published with trs. by Bendali
in JRAS, 1888, pp. 466-501. See Herte.1 in ZDM0, LXIV,
1910, p. 58 f and Dos
Paftcatantra, pp. 37 f , 818 f,
J2 1848B
(
the Nepalese version and the
Bengali Hitopadega.
1 A detailed
study of the character and
interrelation of the various recensions
and versions is not possible
here, but some of their general
characteristics may be briefly
noted. The Tantrakhyayika is
perhaps the oldest Sanskrit
version, and preserves the original
text better and more
extensively than any other version. But
none of the recensionsnot even
the Tantrakhyayika, the claims
of which have been much
exaggerated by Hertel represents in
its entirety the primitive
text. The North-western original of
Ksemendra and Somadeva must
have been a version made much
later in Kashmir. Ksemendra's
fairly faithful, but dry, abstract
suffers from its brevity, but
Somadeva's narrative, inspite of a
few omissions and some
interruption of sequence by the introduction
of extraneous tales, is
normally clear and attractive. There
is a great deal of reshuffling
of stories, as well as intrusion of
additional matter, in both the
Simplicior and Ornatior Texts, the
former adding seven and the
latter twenty-one new stories. The
Southern recension exists in
several sub-versions ; it is much
abbreviated, but nothing
essential appears to have been omitted,
and only one complete story
(The Shepherdess and her Lovers) is
added. The Hitopadeta* which
has currency mostly in Bengal,
is practically an independent
work, containing only four and not
five books, by one Narayana,
whose patron was Dhavalacandra
and who must have lived before
1373 A.D., which is the date
of one of the manuscripts of
the work. The compiler amplifies
the stories derived in the
main from the Paficatantra, by drawing
upon an unknown source,
considerably omits, alters, remodels
1 Repeatedly printed in India,
but not yet critically edited. The better known ed.
is by P. Peterson, Bomb. Skt.
Ser., 1887; also Hitopadetia nach NepaUschen Handfchrift. ed.
H. Blatt, Berlin 1980 (Roman
characters). The earliest ed. is that of A. Hamilton, London
1810, and the earliest trs. by
C. Wilkins, London, 1787.
2 See J. Hertel, fiber Text
und Verfasser des Hitcpade&a (Bias.) Leipzig 1897,
p. 37, and Das Paficatantra,
p. 38 f. In spite of omissions and alteration, the Hitopadeta
preserve! over half the entire
sub-stories of the Paficatantra, and follows closely the archetype
which it shares with the
Southern recension,
1'HK PA&CATANTIU 91
the sequence of books and
stories, and inserts large selections of
didactic matter from
Kamandaklya NUi-sara.
Although Hertel is right in
believing that the Pancatantra
was originally conceived as a
work for teaching political wisdom^
yet the fact should not make
us forget that it is also essentially
a story-book, in which the
story-teller and the political teacher
are unified, most often
successfully, in one personality. There
are instances where the
professed practical object intrudes itself,
and tedious exposition of
polity prevails over simple and vivid
narration ; but these
instances are happily not too numerous,
and the character of the work
as a political text-book is never
glaring. Inequalities
doubtless appear in the stories existing in
the different versions, but
most of them being secondary, it can
be said without exaggeration
that the stories, free from descriptive
and ornamental digressions,
are generally very well and
amusingly told. They show the
author as a master of narrative,
as well us a perfect man of
the world, never departing from an
attitude of detached
observation and often possessed of a considerable
fund of wit and humour veiled
under his pedagogic
seriousness. If he makes his
animals talk, he makes them talk
well and the frankly
fictitious disguise of the fabliau eminently
suits his wise and amusing
manner. With a few exceptions, the
individual stories are
cleverly fitted together into a complex but
well planned form. The
language is elegantly simple, and
the author shows taste and
judgment in never saying a word
too much, except for a touch
of the mock-heroic, and
in realising that
over-elaboration is out of place. The gnomic
stanzas, if not the
title-verses, are not always demanded by the
narrative, but they are meant
to give sententious summary of
wo:ldly wisdom and impressive
utterance to very ordinary, but
essential, facts of life and
conduct. We do not know how
far these stanzas are
original, for some of them occur in the
Epics and elsewhere ; but they
are generally phrased with
epigrammatic terseness, and
form an interesting feature,
in spite of the tendency to
over-accumulate them. It is not
without reason, therefore,
that the work enjoyed, and still enjoys,
such unrivalled popularity as
a great story-book in so many
different times and lands.
b. The Brhatkathd of Gunadhya
The popular tale is
represented by a number of works in
Sanskrit, but the earliest
appears to have been the Brhatkatha, or
' the Great Story/ of Gunadhya,
the Prakrit original of which is
lost, but which is now known
from three comparatively late
Sanskrit adaptations. Its
exact date ] cannot be determined, but
that it already received
recognition before GOO A.D. is clear from
the references to its importance
by Bana 2 and Subandhu3
; and
there is nothing to show that
it cannot be placed much earlier.
If it belongs to a period
after the Christian era, it is not
improbable that the work took
shape at about the same time as
the lost original of the
Pancatantra ; and to assign it to the fourth
century A.D. would not be an
unjust conjecture.
4 The recorded
tradition informs us that the
original Brhatkathd was composed
in Paisaci Prakrit; and it is
noteworthy that the literary form
which the popular tale first
assumed was one in Prakrit. Like
the Pancatantra, the work of
Gunadhya was undoubtedly a new
literary creation, but the
medium of expression perhaps indicates
a difference in method and
outlook.
J On the question of date and
author, see J. S. Speyer, Studies about KaihSsariisdgarfi
Amsterdam 1908, p. 44 f.
Biihler in his Kashmir Report summarily places the work in tin
first centnry A.D., with
ttluch F. Lac6te (Melanges Ltvi, p. 270) appears to agree; bu
S. Levi (ThMtre indien, 1801,
p. 817) cautiously adjusts it to the 3rd century. See Keith in
JRAS, 3909, p. 145f. Both
Dandin's Dasa-kumdra-carita and Subandhu's Vasavadattd refer
to the story of
Naravahaoadatta.
3 Hara-carita t Introductory
gt. 17.
3 Ed. F. . Hall, p. 110.
4 The alleged Sanskrit version
of Durvinlta of the 6th century (R. Narasimhacbar in
L4,LXII, 1913, p. 204 and
JRAS, 1913, p. 889 f; Fleet in JRAS, 1911, pp. 186 f) and the
upposed Tamil version of the
2nd cf-ntury A. I). (S. K. Aiyungar in JRAS, 1906, p. 689 f ; a> d
Ancient India, London 1911,
pp. 328, 337} are too doubtful to be of any use ror chronological
purposes. See Lacote, Euai sur
Gunafyya et la Brhatkatha, Parin 1908, p. 198 f.
THE BJyiHATKATHA 93
An obviously legendary account
of the origin of the work
and the personality of the
author is given, with some variations,
in the introductory account of
the two Kashmirian Sanskrit
versions and in the apocryphal
Nepala-mahatmya
1 of a pseudo-
Puranic character. It makes
Gunadhya an incarnation of
a Gana of Siva, who under a
curse is born at Pratisthana on the
Godavarl and becomes a
favourite of king Satavahana ; but the
king has another learned
favourite in Sarvavarman, the reputed
author of the Katantra
grammar. Having lost a rash wager with
Sarvavarman, with regard to
the teaching of Sanskrit to the
king, who had been put to
shame by the queen for his ignorance
of the language, Gunadhya
abjures the use of Sanskrit
and society, and retires to
the wild regions of the Vindhya hilts.
There, having learnt from
another incarnated Gana of Siva
the story of the Brhatkatha,
originally narrated by Siva to
ParvatI, he records it in the
newly picked up local PaisacT
dialect, in 700,000 Slokas, of
which only one-seventh was
saved from destruction and
preserved in the work as we have it !
The Nepalese version of the
legend, however, places Ciunadhya's
birth at Mathura and makes
king Madana of Ujjayini his
patron; it knows nothing of
the wager but makes Gunadhya, on
being vanquished by
Sarvavarman, write the story in PaisacI for
no other explicit reason than
the advice of a sage named
Pulastya. The legend is
obviously a pious Saiva invention
modified in different ways in
Kashmir and Nepal;
2 from the
reference in the Har$a-carita,
one may inter that it was known
in some form to Banabhatta ;
but the value of biographical and
other details te not beyond
question, if Sarvavarman is
introduced, Panini, Vyadi and
Vararuci-Katyayana also figure in
the legend as contemporaries,
although the Nepalese compiler
does not appreciate the
grammatical interest, nor' the use of
1 Given in Lacdte, op. ctt.,
Appendix, p. 29] f.
2 It is as a saint of Saivism
that Gunu<Jbya figured in the Nepalese work, as well as
in a Cambodian inscription of
about 876 A.D., which is of Saitite inspiration (S. Le"vi in JA,
94 lilbTOHY Ot SANSKRIT LIT
UKAt UHE
Prakrit. The association with
Satavahana recalls one of the
brilliant periods of Prakrit
literature, and probably suggests that
the employment of Sanskrit by
the Ksatrapa rulers probably
found a counter-movement in
favour of the patronage of Prakrit
literature; but Satavahana
being a dynastic name, which may
denote any of several kings,
it does not help to solve the
chronological problem.
3
But much controversy has
naturally centred round the
value of the Gunadhya legend
regarding its testimony on the
form of the lost work and its
language. The legend speaks of
Gunadhya's work being written
in Sloka and in the dialect of
the wild people of the Vindhya
regions, which is called the
dialect of the Pi^acas or
Paigacl. Dandin, in his Kavyadarga
({. 88), appears to know the
legend in some form, and states that
the work was written in the
Bhuta-bhasa ; but he thinks that
it was a type of the prose
romance known as Katha, in which,
of course, verse was allowed
to be inserted. The three existing
Sanskrit versions are all
metrical, but this need not invalidate
Dandin's statement, if Dandin
can be presumed to have possessed
a direct knowledge of the work
already famous in his time.
More inconclusive is the
evidence regarding the nature and
location of the dialect in
which the work was composed. In
accordance with the legend,
the PaisacI Prakrit is localised 2 as
the dialect of the Vindhya
regions lying near about Ujjayini, but it
is also maintained 3 that it
was a North-western Prakrit of Kekaya
and eastern Gandhara, which is
regarded as the ancestor of the
group of Dardic dialects now
spoken in Kafirstan, Swat valley,
1 On the alleged Greek
influence on MunAclhya's work, see Lacote, op. cit.
f pp. 284-86,
who argues the opposite way to
show that the Greek rommce was influenced by the Indian.
See Keith, HSL, p. 866 f.
* Sten Konow in ZDMG, LXIV,
1910, p. 95 f and JRAS, 1921> p. 244 f; Keith, HSL,
p. 269. Bsjas*ekhara
(Kavya-rriimarpsa, p. 51) apparently holds the same view. Sten Konow's
view, in brief, is that the
Pais*aci was an Indo-Aryan language spoken by Dravidians in
Central India.
3 G. Grierson iu JRAS, 1905,
p. 285 f, ZDMG, LXVI, 1913, pp. 49 f, at pp. 74-8C,
JRAS, 1921, p. 424 f, as well
as ia his Linguistic Survey, 1919, Vol. Ill, pt. 2 and in
Hastings, ERE, under Paigaca,
Vol. X (1918), p. 43 f.
THE B9HATKATHI 95
Citral and adjacent places.
The difficulty of arriving at a final
conclusion * lies in the fact
that the statements of fairly late
Prakrit grammarians about
Pai^acI Prakrit, as well as the doubtful
fragments cited by them as
specimens,
2 are meagre and uncertain.
It is also not safe to argue
back from the character and location
of present-day dialects to
those of a hypothetical Prakrit. The
designation Pai^acI was
perhaps meant to indicate that it was an
inferior and barbarous
dialect, and the sanction of a vow was
required for its employment ;
but what we know about it
from Prakrit grammarians and'
other sources makes it probable
that it was an artificial form
of speech nearer in some respects
to Sanskrit than the average
Prakrit. If it hardened / and d
alone, it is a characteristic
which may be equally applicable to a
Vindhya dialect influenced by
Dravidian and to a dialect of the
North-west. The question,
therefore, does not admit of an easy
solution, although greater
plausibility may be attached to the
linguistic facts adduced from
the Dardic dialects.
The exact content and bulk of
the original Brliatkatha cannot
also be determined, even to
the extent to which we can
approximate to those of the
original Pancatantra . We have two
main sources of knowledge,
derived from Kashmir and Nepal
respectively, but both of them
employ a different medium of
expression, and are neither
early nor absolutely authentic.
The first is given by two
metrical Sanskrit adaptations of
Kashmir, namely, the
Brhatkatha-mafijar'i
* ' the Bouquet of Great
1 Lacote, op. cit. t p. 51 f.
Lac6te believes the Pui^acT to be based upon the Indo-Aryan
language of the North-wee/,
but spoken by non-Aryan people. He suggests a via media by
stating that Gunadhya picked
up the idea of the dialect from travellers from the North-west;,
I ut his sphere of work lay
around Ujjayinll Cf. F. W. Thomas, Foreword to Penzer's cd. of
Ocean of Story, Vol. IV, pp.
ix-x.
2 Hemacandra's Prakrit Grammar,
ed. Pischel, iv. 303-24; for Markendieys , see
Grierson in JRAS, 1918, p.
391. For a discussion of the passages, see Lac6te, op. erf.,
p 201 f. Vararuci speaks of
one Pais'acI dialect ; Heujacandra appears to distinguish three
varieties; Mftrkan<jeya increases
the number to thirteen 1 Different localities are mentioned,
i>ut one locality is agreed
upon, viz., Kekaya or N. W. Punjab.
3 Ed. Sivadatta and Parab,
NSP, Bombay, 1901. Parts of it (introduction and first
two stories), translated with
the Eoman text, by S. Le*vi in JA, 1885-86,
Tale,' of the polymath
Ksemendra, and the Katha-sarit-sagara,*
*
the Ocean of Rivers of Tales/
of Soraadeva, the latter written
between 1063 and 1082 A.D. and
the former about a quarter of a
century earlier.
2 Like Somndeva's work, that
of Ksemendra is
divided into eighteen
Lambhakas, 3 but it is of the nature of a
condensed abstract,
industriously and perhaps (as his other
Mafijaris show) faithfully
compiled. It consists of about 7,5 "0
31okas, as against more than
21,000 of Somadeva's work ; but
Ksemendra makes up for the
brevity and dreariness of his
narrative by a number of
elegant, but mannered, descriptive and
erotic passages.
4 Somadeva, on the other hand,
is not anxious
to abridge ; but he shows
considerable restraint in avoiding
useless elaboration, and tells
his stories with evident zest and in
a clear and attractive manner.
At one time it was thought that
these two Kashmirian versions
drew directly from the Prakrit
original, but the idea has now
been discarded, not only from the
comparative evidence of their
contents, but also in view of the
discovery in Nepal in 1893 of
the second important source,
namely, the
BrhatkatM-loka-samgraha of Budhasvamin, 5 which
is also in Sloka, but unfortunately
incomplete. Its date is unknown,
but it is assigned, mainly on
the probable date and
1 Ed. Durgaprasad and Parab,
NSP, Bombay 1889 (reprinted 1903, 1915 etc.). II.
Brokhaus edited i-v (with
trs.), 2 vols. Leipzig 1813, and vi-viii, ix-xviii (text only) in Abb fiir
die Kunde d. Morgenlandes, II
and IV, Leipzig 1862 and 18G6. The work is well known from
its Eng. trs. by C. H. Tawney
under the title Ocean of Story in Bibl. Ind., Calcutta 1880-87,
reprinted with notes and
essays, etc., by N. M. Penzer in 10 vols., London 1924-28.
2 See Biihler, Uber das
Zeitalter des katmirisclien Didders Somadeva, Wien 1885.
Somadeva wrote the work to
please SilryamatT, princess of Jalarpdbara, wife of Ananta and
mother of Kalada. Ksemendra
also wrote most of his works under king Kalas*a of Kashmir.
5 The division d es not seem
to be original, being missing in Budbosvamin's version,
which has Sarga division. The
sections are called Gucchakas *
clusters
'
in Ksemendra, and
Tarangas 'billows
'
in Soraadeva, according to the
respective titles of their "works.
* On these descriptive
passages, see Speyer, op. ct., p. 17 f. Speyer estimates that
Ksemendra 's work contains
7,561 gltkas, Somadeva's 21,388.
5 Ed. F. Lacdte, with trs,,
Paris 1908-29 (i-xxviii). The work was first discovered
by Haraprasad Sastri in Nepal,
but its importance wag not realised till Lac6te edited the
work and published the results
of his investigations. The MS is from Nepal, but otherwise
there is no sign of the
Nepalese origin of the work.
tradition of the manuscript,
to the 8th or 9th century A.D.
Although this work is a
fragment of 28 Sargas and 4,539 stanzas,
and also, as its name implies,
an abbreviated abstract, its
evidence is highly important
regarding the existence of two
distinct traditions of the
text, which show considerable and
remarkable divergences.
1
Tbe main theme of both the
recensions appears to be the
adventures of Naravahanadatta,
son of the gay and amorous
Udayana, famed in Sanskrit
literature, and bis final attainment
of Madanamanjuka as his bride
and the land of the Vidyadharas
as his empire; but in the
course of the achievement, he visits
many lands and contracts a
large number of marriages with
beautiful maidens of all kinds
and ranks. A vital difference,
however, occurs in the
treatment of the theme. While the
Nepalese recension
concentrates upon the main theme and gives
a simple and connected
narrative, comparatively free from
extraneous matters, the
Kashtnirian recension is encumbered
by a stupendous mass of episodic
stories, indiscriminately accumulated
and remotely connected,
regardless of the constant
break and obscuration of the
original theme. The Nepalese
recension, for instance,
ornits the introductory Gunadhya
legend, which occurs in the
Kashmirian, and plunges at once
into the story of Gopala and
Palaka and of the love of Gopala's son
for Suratamanjarl, connecting
it with the story of Naravahanadatta,
who is made the narrator of
the tale of his twenty-six
marriages. The Kashmirian
authors are apparently aware of this
beginning, but the necessity
of commencing with the Gunadhya
legend and making Gunadhya the
narrator of the tale makes them
shift the story of -Gopfila,
Pfilaka and Suratamanjarl, and place it,
unconnectedly, as a kind of
appendix at the end. The Nepalese
recension omits also the
unnecessary tale of Udayana 's winning of
1 See Lac6te, Essai cited
above, for a discussion of the Kashmirian versions, pp. 61-145,
the Nepalese version, pp.
146-196, comparison of the two versions, pp. 207-18, and of the
original Bfhatkatha, pp. 1-59.
PadmSvati, and does not think
it desirable to provide royal ancestry
for the courtesan Kalingasena,
mother of Madanamanjuka, in
order to conceal the
questionable origin of the heroine. In the
Kashmirian recension, the hero
Naravahanadatta does not even
pake his appearance till his
birth in Bk. IV (in both versions),
but the narrative of the. hero
is interrupted for two more books
by the stories of Saktivega
and Suryaprabha, who, recognising
in the infant the destined
emperor of the Vidyadharas, relate
their own adventures as
aspirants to the same rank. In this
way, the main theme is
constantly interrupted by a vast cycle
of legends, although Ksemendra
and Somadeva are not in perfect
agreement, after Bk. IV,
regarding the sequence and arrangement
of the extra mass of material.
It is clear that both the Kashmirian
versions do not, in their zeal
for collection, succeed in
producing a unified or
well-constructed work, although the
narrative of Somadeva, who is
a consummate story-teller, is
marked, in spite of its bulk,
by greater coherence and desire
to preserve, however
strenuously, the effect of the main story.
The accretions, for example,
not only bring in entirely irrelevant
stones of Mrgankadatta and
Muktaphalaketu, of expedition to
the Camphor Land and the White
Island for the winning of
Ratnaprabha and Alamkaravati
respectively, but also incorporate
the Vikramaditya cycle of
legends and interpolate versions of
the entire Paflcatantra and
the Vetala-pancavimati. All this,
with the addition of countless
number of small tales, legends
and witty stories, would
justify the quaint, but appropriate,
name of Somadeva' s largest
collection as the ocean of the streams
of stories, and which in their
rich mass would make the overwhelmed
reader exclaim that here is
indeed God's plenty !
How far these episodes and
legend-cycles belonged to the
original Brhatkatha cannot be
precisely determined, but it is
clear that much of them is
remotely and sometimes confusedly
connected with the main theme,
and is entirely missing in the
Nepalese recension. It is true
that Budhasvamin's work is
speciallyc styled a ompendium
(Samgraba) and that his omissions
THE BRHATKATHA V\f
may have been dictated by a
desire for^ abbreviation ; it is also
possible
1 that Budhasvainin is an
independent writer rather than
a mere epitomator, although he
may have adhered to Gunadhya's
narrative in the main. But it
is clear^ from the way in which the
thread of the main story of
Naravahanadatta is kept from being
lost in an interminable maze
of loosely gathered episodes, that
these interruptions or
deviations from the predominant interest
could not have occurred on a
large scale in the original, if we are
to presume from its reputation
that it was a work of no small
literary merit. It seems,
therefore, that Budhasvamin follows
the original with greater
fidelity
2 than Ksemendra and Somadeva,
who, apart from minor stories
which they individually insert,
are following a recension
refashioned and much enlarged in
Kashmir. In this recension the
central theme appears to occupy,
after the fashion of
Kavya-poets, a subordinate interest; their
essentials are often abridged
and throughout sacrificed to the
uluborutioii of subsidiary
adventures, as well as to a somewhat
confused insertion of tales
derived from other sources. Whether
this Kashinirian recension was
in Pai&lc! or in Sanskrit is
not known ; but Somadeva
distinctly speaks of having altered
the language, and there are
not enough verbal similarities3
between Somadeva and Ksemendra
to warrant the supposition
oi a common Sanskrit original.
In the absence of the original
work of Gunadhya, an estimate
of its literary merit would be
futile. Each of the three adaptations
have their own characteristics,
which may or may not
have been inherited from the
original. Ksemendra's abridged
compilation is rapid, dreary
and uninspiring, except in ornamental
passages," which
doubtless show the influence of the
Kavya. Somadeva' s larger and
more popular masterpiece has
J Winternitz, GIL, III, pp.
315-17.
*
Lac6be, Essai, p. 207 f,
Lacote believes that the Kashmir recension is far removed from
the original Bfhatkatha. and
was compiled about the 7th century A.D.
3
Bpeyer.oy. eft., p. 27 f,
been rightly praised for its
immensely superior quality of vivid
story-telling and its
elegantly clear, moderate and appropriate
style. Budhasvatnin's
abstract, considered nearer to the original,
is marked by a sense of
proportion both in matter and mannera
rapid narration, power of
characterisation and simple description,
as well as by a more bourgeois
spirit and outlook suiting the
popular tale ; but, in spite
of these qualities, it is of a somewhat
prosaic cast. It is difficult
to say how far all the praiseworthy
qualities, if not the
blemishes, of these late versions, produced
under different conditions,
were present in the primary Brhatkatha,
a verbal or even a confident
substantial reconstruction of which
is wellnigh impossible. To
judge, however, from the principal
theme, -stories and
characters, as well ay iiom the general method
and outlook, it is possible to
assert that Gunadbya must have
been a master at weaving into
his simple story of romantic
adventure all the marvels of
myth, magic and fairy tale, as well
as a kaleidoscopic view of
varied and well-conceived characters and
situations. Although
JSaravahanadatta is a prince, the story is
not one of court life or
courtly adventure, nor even of heroic
ideals ; it is essentially a
picture consonant with the middle class
view of life and sublimated
with the romance of strange adventure
in fairy lands of fancy. It is
certainly a work of larger and
more varied appeal, containing
a gallery ol sketches from liie,
romantic as well as real ; and
Keith is perhaps just in characterising
it as a kind of bourgeois
epic. The loves of the muchmarried
Naravahanaclatta are perhaps
too numerous and too lighthearted,
like those of his famed father
LJdayana, but his chief and
best love, Madanamanjuka, has
only one parallel in Vasantasena
of the Mfcchakatika ; while in
Goraukha we have a fine example of
an energetic, resourceful and
wise courtier and friend. It cannot
be determined with certainty
if the numerous tales of fools, rogues
and naughty women existed in
the original ; but they form an
unparalleled store-house ot
racy and amusing stories, which evince
a wide and intimate experience
of human life and are in keeping
with the humour and robust
good sense of people at large.
Om Tat Sat
(Continued...)
(Continued...)
(My humble salutations to Sreeman S N Dasgupta ji and Sreeman S K
De ji for the collection)