To Make the Short Story Long: the Development of the Frame-Story Structure in Sanskrit Narrative
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Virpi Hämeen-Anttila To make the short story long: the development of the frame-story structure in Sanskrit narrative The Vedic and Epic models Academic dissertation to be publicly discussed, by due permission of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki in lecture room PIII on the 18th of January, 2019 at 12 o’clock. ISBN 978-951-51-4769-1 (print) ISBN 978-951-51-4770-7 (PDF) https://ethesis.helsinki.fi Unigrafia Oy Helsinki 2018 1 Abstract The dissertation is interdisciplinary: it is divided between South Asian studies (material, philological methods) and comparative literature (methods of narratology). Its special area is Sanskrit literature. It investigates the first frame structures in Vedic literature (ca. 1200 - 500 BCE) and follows the development of the frame to the age of the epics Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa (ca. 400 BCE - 300 CE). The material consists of Vedic hymns and later Vedic texts, mainly of commentaries (Brāhmaṇas), and the two epics mentioned above. The “omphalos” and dialogue hymns of the Ṛgveda and complex narratives embedded in the Brāhmaṇas receive special attention, and later on the emphasis is on the frames, levels and narrators of the Mahābhārata. In the analysis methods of narratology are used, most of all theories and concepts concerning frame structures, with reference to such theorists as Wolf Schmid, Monika Fludernik and William Nelles. Samples from chosen texts are analysed paying attention to narrative technique, narrative levels, narrators, narratees and narrative situation. The questions of text types, defitions of the frame and the narrative, and the literalization of oral tradition are also discussed in the light of the material. Thus far there have not been any comprehensive studies of the history of frame in India. The aim of this work has been to provide one for the Vedic and pre-Classical era. It shows that framing structures are found already in Vedic literature, and that this literary strategy has roots in continuous tradition of preserving texts inside other texts. This means criticizing and refuting a theory according to which the frame device was copied from Vedic rituals. These results are reached by the narratological analysis mentioned above and by comparing early examples of Vedic literature with later Vedic and epic texts. The study gives information of various types, uses and functions of the frame, introduces a new theory of “tripartite narrative strategy” that is the basis of narration in the Mahābhārata and proposes three models for the literary frame in India: the Vedic, the Epic and the conversational frame. The last one is “a master model” which challenges the standard definitions of the narrative and the frame. 2 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements 5 A note on translations and transcriptions 6 1. INTRODUCTION 7 1.1. The background and the aims of this study 7 1.2. The material 12 1.3. The methods and theoretical premises 15 1.4. Previous research on the subject 30 2. BEGINNINGS: THE VEDIC MODEL 39 2.1. First questions 39 2.1.1. The definitions for frame and embedding 39 2.1.2. The definitions for literariness and literature 45 2.2. The structure of Vedic hymns: is there one to be found? 53 2.2.1.“Proto-framing” in the Ṛgveda 60 2.2.2. The saṃvāda hymns and the ākhyāna theory 76 2.3. Narratives in the Brāhmaṇas 86 2.3.1. “Something old, something new...” 90 2.3.2. Cyavana 104 2.3.3. Śunaḥśepa 117 2.4. Texts or rituals? 136 2.5. Frames, levels and narrators in the Ṛgveda 142 2.6. The conversational frame and the narrative levels in the Brāhmaṇas 151 2.7. The Vedic model 163 3. IN THE MAZE: THE EPIC MODEL 168 3.1. The overall scheme of the Mahābhārata 168 3.1.1. The frame of Ugraśravas (F(I)) 173 3.1.2. The frame of Vaiśaṃpāyana (F(II)) 187 3.2. The levels of narration in the Mahābhārata 196 3.2.1 The levels of F(I) 197 4 3.2.2. The levels of F(II): the frame of Saṃjaya 212 3.2.3. The levels of F(II): the frame of Bhīṣma 218 3.2.4. The levels of F(II): the Āraṇyakaparvan 226 3.3. The narrators and the boundaries 239 3.3.1. The narrators, the narratees and the narrative situation 240 3.3.2. “The Author” 256 3.3.3. The boundaries of narrative and the narrative time 263 3.4. The origin of the frames in the Mahābhārata 271 3.5. Other frame narratives of the Epic age 279 3.5.1. The Rāmāyaṇa 280 3.5.2. The Jātakas 295 3.5.3. The Bṛhaddevatā 302 3.6. The Epic model 312 4. CONCLUSIONS 320 Texts and translations 326 Bibliography 330 5 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my learned supervisors, Professor Xenia Zeiler and Associate Professor Klaus Karttunen, from the University of Helsinki, for their continuous interest, support and criticism of my work. I am greatly indebted to Professor Emeritus Asko Parpola, who together with Dr. Karttunen guided me through my graduate studies in Sanskrit language and literature and Indian culture at the University of Helsinki. I also wish to thank my friend and colleague, lic. phil. Petteri Koskikallio for his help and support; Professor Emeritus Hannu K. Riikonen for his interest and notes on my MA thesis, which have been useful also for this work; Professor Edwin Gerow for his acute criticism on the early phase of my dissertation; and Professor Pekka Tammi for his insightful lectures which first introduced me the discipline of narratology. At the final stage, when revising the manuscript, I have benefited enormously from the comments of the pre-examiners of the dissertation, Professor Markku Lehtimäki (the University of Turku) and Dr. Renate Söhnen-Thieme (SOAS). At the university of Helsinki I have for several years been happy to participate in the program for postgraduate students. I have been privileged to enjoy the sympathetic help and advice of the counsellors of postgraduate studies at the University of Helsinki, and I am especially grateful for the eager response, criticism and encouragement that my project received in the discussions during the Summer School of the Doctoral programme of History and Cultural Heritage in August 2015, presided by Professor Kirsi Saarikangas. I thank cordially the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Emil Aaltonen Foundation, and The Soroptimist International Finland for funding my research. My warmest thanks go to my family for their patience and positive spirit. Professor Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila (University of Edinburgh) has not only given me his untiring support but also put his expertise in scholarly criticism and discourse to my service. Maria Hämeen-Anttila, a doctoral student at the University of Helsinki since 2017, has been a regular partner in inspiring discussions about methods and theories in humanities. She and my son Maxwell kept my spirits up during the last strenuous lap of the editing the manuscript. 6 A note on translations and transcriptions The translations from the Sanskrit and Pāli are my own unless otherwise indicated. In them I have used critical editions mentioned in the chapter 1.2., which describes the material, and in the list of “text and translations” in the bibliography. Longer text examples are given in separate sections. I have not included original Sanskrit or Pāli texts, because exact wordings are rarely relevant when one studies structures of texts. It also would have taken too much space to provide a double amount of textual examples, many of which I need to quote in full because they are not easily available for narratologists. But in some details, especially when discussing Vedic material, I have made an exception. The names of the works and important literary or cultural terms are given in Sanskrit and marked with italics. The transcription of Sanskrit follows the usual system: a macron indicates a long vowel (ā, ī, ū), e and o being naturally long; ś is a palatal sibilant, ṭ, ḍ and ṣ are cerebrals (pronounced with the tongue curled back and touching the palate); c is a voiceless palatal fricative (pronounced like the “ch” in church) and j the corresponding voiced one (as the “j“ in journal); ch and jh are these phonemes with an added aspiration; n has velar, palatal and dental allophones (ṅ, ñ and n); ṃ is a homorganic nasal regulated by the following consonant; ṛ is a vowel, usually pronounced with a weak i or u (as in the Ṛgveda with initial ri), and ḥ is an unvoiced aspirant that replaces an original s or r at the end of the word or a morpheme. 7 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1. The background and the aims of this study One particular structural device has dominated narrative texts in old Indian literature: the frame story. If one wanted to collect several narratives within one work, the solution has always been the frame. It is present everywhere and in many forms in the Mahābhārata, the two-thousand-year-old national epic of India, and repeated in its smaller cousin, equally influential Rāmāyaṇa. It is used in the Pañcatantra, a somewhat later, immensely popular collection of stories, to such a measure that there are many embeddings on the fourth and fifth level in this text. And as the device was exported to the medieval Middle East by translations of Pañcatantra as early as in the 6th to 8th centuries CE and started a vogue there, and later in medieval Europe, it may well be that the Indian frame eventually provided the model for the well-known story-within-a-story structure of the Thousand and One Nights.