Mies About the Kathasantsagara
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Mies about the Kathasantsagara BY J. S. SPEYER. Verhandelingen der Roninklijke Akademie van Welenschappen te Amsterdam. AFDEELING LETTERKMDE. NIEUWE REEKS. Deel Till. N°, 5. AMSTERDAM, JOHANNES MULLER, Januari 1908. todies about the Kathasaritsagara BY J. S. SPEYER. der Koninklijke Akademie van Welenschappen te Amsterdam. AFDEELING LETTERKUNDE. NIEUWE REEKS. l)eel Till. N°. 5. AMSTERDAM, JOHANNES MULLER. 1908. Index of passages quoted from other Sanskrit texts than Kathasaritsagara and Brhatkathamanjari page Avadanagataka I, 48 10. 157 1897 87 22315 85 K s e m e n d ra : Aucityav\Icaracarca gl.7 23 note The (Pali) Jataka 1, 26614 87 Jatakamala VI, 27 159 p. 22115 132 Tantrakhyayika I, 56 51 (ed. He'rtel) Dagakumaracarita Uttarakh., IVth Ucchv 161 Divyavadana p. 63325. 157 Panini HI, 2, 13 78 Prabodhacandrodaya V, st. 28 88 i Mudraraksasa I, st. 15* 54 n. III, at the beginning 131 IV, p. 179 (ed. Trimbak Telang). 51 bharatavakya . 52 . 53 Rgvedasamhita I, 63, 4 J IV, 1, 15 . 77 IV, 19, 4 I Varahamihira: Yogayatra 7, 14* 85 141—43 of the / Qlokasamgraha Brhatkatha, and and about it. judgment 56—59 The asterisks point out places critically treated. Index of notable Sanskrit words As the words making up the list of p. 76 — 87 are put in alphabetical order, they are not included here. page page anvaya. 22. 23 . 32 niblialayati 129 apalapana. 53 niyama . 100 °apasada. 161 nirlaksml . 156. 157 aqahuna 73 nispratibhana 157 acraya 53 patlias 111 utphalati 144 paravatakkho (Paigaci) 30 udghata 131 parvctna 53 upahartavya etc., confoun- bhasa 9 ded with upjalian 160 marda. 104 root ublt 77 Mara . 147 aucitya 22. 23 . 31 Mildlaropya . 37 karnlrat/ia 137 murkhakathas 17 18 kalatra. 53 note mecaka 66 kavyamca 23 yad astti \ 126 bhavatu \ kllapaqa yad 66 gaganaiigana 115 yad bhavitd i gatadhvan . 159 yad vid/tattam J galla (= ganda). 128 ruddhaka 83 ghuka 26 rupjaka 55 cirantl 80 lambaka 1 (= cirayan U) 11. 59 chayddvitiya 39 lambhaka \ °jani. 129 varam used as a particle 161. 162 tambula 49 °vega. Names ending in— 108 dlndra 55 calabhanjika 10 drdhayati — dradhayati 88 sabrahmacarin. 72 note. 140 . °drgvan . 69 samaya 100 na param . .yavat 73 sammada 102 na mati sma 66. 110 Sttkhavati 20 66 nangesv aval lata 110 hevaki CONTENTS. Pages Introductory Chapter 1 — 8 Section the Pirst Brhatkatha and Kathdsaritsdgara Chapter I. The Brhatkathamaiijari. 9 Chapter II. The Brhatkatha. Its contents. 27 Chapter III. The Brhatkatha. Its date and its author 44 Section II The Text of the Kathdsaritsdgara Chapter I. The two editions. 61 § 1 . General comparison of the editions of Brockhaus and of Durgaprasad. 61 § 2. Errors and mistakes in Brockhaus' edition 67 § 3. Corrections of Kathas. words and expressions to be made in the Petropolitan Dictionary 76 § 4. Grammatical monstra removed. 87 § 5. D's edition not a critical edition. 91 Chapter II. List of passages, the text of which has been improved in Durgaprasad 's edition 94 Chapter III. Conjectural criticism. 154 Chapter IV Metrorum conspectus. 174 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. In days of yore, when Qiva, the Lord of the Universe, was alone with his beloved wife, the daughter of Himavant, and caressed her, she asked him to tell her some charming new tale. For Indian gods and goddesses are as fond of tales as Indian men and women. The Supreme God, however reluctantly and after an unsuccessful expedient to acquit himself with little, entered upon a story of immense length and of an extraordinary charm. Parvati wishing to keep the whole of the pleasure to be procured by that wonderful catena of tales to herself, shut the door and ordered Nandin, Qiva's bull, to withhold any person whatsoever from coming in. In the meanwhile one of Qiva's most beloved Ganas, Puspadanta his name, went on to see his master. Being forbidden the entrance, he succeeded by dint of magic power to penetrate unseen within the presence of Qiva and Parvati and to overhear that new and delightful story about the seven sovereigns of the Air-spirits (Vi dyad haras). Full as he was of the great tale he had heard, he afterwards narrated it to his own wife Jaya; „for who can hide wealth or a secret from women?" She again told it over to her mistress, the wife of Qiva, for „how can women be expected to restrain their speech?" So it happened that Parvati knew the disclosure of the Great Narration notwithstanding the precautions taken to keep it secret, and in her wrath she cursed the indiscreet Gana to be born as a man. Malyavant, another Gana, who interceded for his guilty friend, was in a similar manner damned to a human existence. She fixed, however, a limit to the punishment. „When you, Puspadanta, will meet in the forest with a Pigaca whose name is Kanabhuti and who is properly a Yaksa brought to the state of Pigaca by a curse of Kubera, you will remember the whole tale; then you must narrate it to Verhand. Kon. Akad. v. Wetensch. Afd. Letterk. N. R. Dl. VIII. N°. 5. 1 2 STUDIES ABOUT THE KATHASAKITSAGAEA. him, after wrhich you shall be released. As to Malyavant, he shall get free from the curse, after hearing the tale from Kanabhuti." Accordingly both fell down from on high and were born in the world of men. And having spent their lives with various things, they fulfilled at last and after many vicissitudes the conditions prescribed to them and so regained the upper regions and their former state. But Malyavant, or rather Gunadhya — for that was his name on earth and in his human existence — having heard the tale as it wras narrated to him by Kanabhuti, could not recover his original state, before he had written it down and proclaimed it. Now, since the language in which it had been communicated to him was the vulgar and despised Paigaci tongue, Kanabhuti being a Pigaca, and since himself was prohibited to translate it into some nobler dialect, restrained as he was by a vowT from the use of Sanskrit, Prakrit and either Apabhramga or the conversa tional language of the country (degi) 1), six sevenths of the won drous narration were lost from want of human audience to catch the tale and keep it. He had no other listeners than the forest- animals and the trees, on which beings he spent his recital, bur ning each leaf of the text after proclaiming. Finally king Satava- hana, whose minister Gunadhya had formerly been, being requested to lay hold on the tale, went up to him and preserved the rest for mankind, even this a poem of considerable size, as it extended over 100.000 glokas. This is the miraculous origin of that rich and splendid store house of manifold stories, preserved to us in a Sanskrit redaction, the Kathasaritsagara, as is narrated in its first book, „The Socle of the Tale." Somadeva, the Kashmirian court-poet to whom we are indebted for that „largest and most interesting collection" 2) of tales, is with due right considered one of the most illustrious Indian And for I dare that he is one of the poets. my part , say few Indian litterary geniuses who by their relative simplicity of their moderation in the of rhetorical language , employment requi sites, their aiming at clearness and appropriateness of style, their knowledge of human nature and their art of arranging the plot of a tale, may stand out the judgment of European criticism accor ding to the standard of Occidental taste. Though he lived as late as the second part of the eleventh century, I do not hesitate to *) Ksemendra, Brhatkalhamaiijarl (ed. Mrnayas.) p. 29, §1. 51: tyaktabhasatrayo 'py aham / paicacim anapabhramcasamskrtaprakrtam gritah, but Kathas. 7,148 samskrtam prakrtam tadvad decabhasa ca sarvada / bhdsatrayam idam tyaktam. 2) Wilson, Hindu Fiction in bis Essays, ed. by Rost, I, 157. STUDIES ABOUT THE KATHASARITSAGARA. 3 make him rank with the greatest Sanskrit authors and to place his of tales so his Ocean of the Streams of Encyclopedia (for „ Story" is characterized the best) as a classical work next to the lyric poems and dramatic writings of Kalidasa. His language charms by its purity and the proper choice of words, his style by its plainness and his metrical skill is and is elegance , great fully displayed by the number and variety of the different metres which he handles with ease and without the slightest embarrassment. from the beautiful form of the its contents are of Apart poem , great interest. This store-house of tales may have been built at a com paratively recent time, the very eve of the Mohammedan conquest, the stories and legends gathered up in it are old ones. The Brhat katha its source it centuries. And this older , , preceded by many collection must also have been made up out of traditional materials. It is a matter of fact, that some smaller collections, as the Panca- tantra and the Vetalapancavimcati are incorporated into it; now and then the reader meets with some mythological narration from the Vedic age *) or with celebrated epic and pauranik stories, as that of Qibi and the dove (tar. 7, 88—97), of Ruru and the water- snake (tar. 14, 76—87), of Sunda and Upasunda (tar. 15, 135—140), of the birth of Skanda (tar. 21, 60 foil.), of the death of Pandu (tar. 21, 20—27), the love-story of Usa and Aniruddha (tar. 31, 11 —33), and the extensive relation of the tale of Nala and Damayanti (56, 238—417). In other portions of the book legends of the Buddhists are often reproduced, especially in lambaka VI.