Schweizerische Asiengesellschaft Société Suisse-Asie 5 Asiatische Studien Etudes Asiatiques LUI • 1998 Zeitschrift der Schweizerischen Asiengesellschaft Revue de la Société Suisse - Asie Peter Lang Bern • Berlin • Frankfurtam Main • New York • Paris • Wien ASIATISCHE STUDIEN ÉTUDES ASIATIQUES Herausgegeben von / Editées par JOHANNES BRONKHORST (Lausanne) - REINHARD SCHULZE (Bern) - ROBERT GASSMANN (Zürich) - EDUARD KLOPFENSTEIN (Zürich) - JACQUES MAY (Lausanne) - GREGOR SCHOELER (Basel) Redaktion: Ostasiatisches Seminar der Universität Zürich, Zürichbergstrasse 4, CH-8032 Zürich Die Asiatischen Studien erscheinen vier Mal pro Jahr. Redaktionstermin für Heft 1 ist der 15. September des Vorjahres, für Heft 2 der 15. Dezember, für Heft 3 der 15. März des gleichen Jahres und für Heft 4 der 15. Juni. Manuskripte sollten mit doppeltem Zeilenabstand geschrieben sein und im allgemeinen nicht mehr als vierzig Seiten umfassen. 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They should be typed double-spaced with footnotes (also double-spaced) and the alphabetically arranged glossary at the end. Manuscripts should not exceed forty pages. Publiziert mit Unterstützung der Schweizerischen Akademie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften Peter Lang Bern • Berlin ■ Frankfurt am Main • New York • Paris • Wien Asiatische Studien Etudes Asiatiques LU -1 • 1998 Zeitschrift der Schweizerischen Asiengesellschaft Revue de la Société Suisse - Asie Peter Lang Bern • Berlin • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Paris • Wien ISSN 0004-4717 © Peter Lang AG, Europäischer Verlag der Wissenschaften, Bern 1998 Alle Rechte Vorbehalten. Das Werk einschliesslich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung ausserhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Printed in Germany BHOJA’S SRNGÀRAPRAKÀSA AND THE PROBLEM OF RASA A HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION AND ANNOTATED TRANSLATION Sheldon Pollock, Chicago In Memory of Dr. K. Krishnamoorthy History has been unfair to the Érngàraprakâsa (SP), the greatest of the two dozen works of Bhoja, the Paramâra king who during the first half of the eleventh century ruled widely in what is the present-day state of Madhya Pradesh and presided over a literary court that, like the king himself, was later to become the stuff of legend.1 Despite the fact that it is the most comprehensive and sustained body of literary analysis in premodem India, in some ways the most germane - in view of the range of issues treated that are pertinent to reading actually existing Sanskrit literature - and in its organization, style, and plethora of citations and analyses perhaps the most fascinating, the SP attracted no commentarial attention that we know of. Although it was read widely in south India and in Bengal,2 only a few 1 I refer to Bhoja as the author of the SP not as shorthand (for “the literary circle of Bhoja”) but literally. The work throughout is unmistakably marked by the voice of a single author, and it is hard not to hear this as Bhoja’s, as for example in his comment on the first kârikâ: “It is not just anyone who enunciates this verse, but a particular man, [who is in fact] a great king,” etc. (see below p. 140). Later rulers view Bhoja as the model of the cultured king. Krsnadevarâya of Vijayanagara, for example, referred to himself as “King Bhoja of All Art” (sakalakalâbhoja) both in his inscriptions and in his drama, the Jàmbavatïparinaya. 2 Though almost certainly not Kashmir. The Sâhityamïmâmsâ, which cites Bhoja extensively, has been attributed to the twelfth-century poet and scholar, Mankhaka, in a new edition of the work (edited by Gaurinath Shastri [Varanasi: Sanskrit University 1984)], but on very weak grounds. Bhoja was however known to the great Tibetan scholar Sa-skya Pandita (1182-1251), who studied under the Kashmiri Sakyasri- bhadra. He tell us in the prologue to his “Entryway into Scholarship” that he mastered two poetic treatises, Kàvyàdarsa and Sarasvatîkanthâbharana (Matthew KAPSTEIN, personal communication). For Bengal, see BHATTACHARYYA 1963 and DELMONICO 1989. Bhoja was a central authority for the thirteenth-century Sanskritizing commenta­ tor on the Tirukkural, Parimelajakar of Kâncïpuram; he refers to the SP itself (cf. François GROS in Nalini BALBIR, ed., Genres littéraires en Inde [Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1994], p. 357). It may seem odd that his literary-critical work is not mentioned in the later Paramâra world itself; Aijunavarman, for example, king of 118 SHELDON POLLOCK (four?) incomplete manuscripts of the work are available today, two of which appear to be transcripts of a third. Even after the entire extant text was edited by the heroic efforts of G. R. JOYSER and printed in Mysore,3 the work seems hardly to have been read by scholars; basic misinformation (regarding for example Bhoja’s relationship to Anandavardhana) continues to be transmitted.4 The bibliography of scholarship on the SP stands in a proportion precisely inverse to the text’s physical mass and intellectual weight. Almost nothing has been written that gives evidence of sustained eng<igsrnent with the work, and none of it seems to have been found worthy of translating into any South Asian or Western language, one index of such an engagement.5 The sole exception to this universal neglect is the monograph of V. RAGHAVAN.6 This is unquestionably a worthy monument to a great masterpiece. By providing detailed background information for most of the questions Bhoja discusses it has with justice become basic reading for students of Sanskrit literature. But in the very success of RAGHAVAN’s study lay a certain kind of failure: its effect has been, not to open the door to Bhoja but to nail it shut. Sanskrit scholar friends of mine in Mysore, for example, are typical in regarding any research interest in the SP as pistapesana.1 But the long anticipated publication of RAGHAVAN’s edition Dhara ca. 1215, never cites Bhoja in the Rasikasamjivani, his learned comentary on the Amarusataka. It is not impossible that the looting of the royal library by Jayasimha Siddharaja ca. 1140, while enabling Hemacandra to make such extensive use of the SP, deprived Bhoja’s own heirs of it. 3 Mysore: Coronation Press, 1955 - ca. 1969. Four vols. 4 Many scholars, for example, continue to believe that Bhoja is ignorant o f the dhvani doctrine, thus reproducing DE’s old error despite RAGHA VAN’s correction (1978: 150- 51 = 1963: 153). See below, karika 5 of the SP, and ad R 397.4ff. 5 Add to the references in Gerow 1977: 269-71, Chapter 4 of Delmonico 1989. While DELMONICO correctly acknowledges, in a couple o f places, Bhoja’s focus on the literary character as the locus of rasa, which I emphasize below, he does not apply this in his exegesis of the work. In the rest of his analysis I cannot follow him. 6 Bhoja’s Srhgaraprakdsa (Madras: Punarvasu, 1978). 7 I profited however from discussions with them, especially the late Dr. K. KRISHNA- MOORTHY, dean of modem-day dlahkdrikas, and Vidvan H. V. Nagaraja RAO. I am also much indebted to my friend Prof. Ashok Aklujkar (Vancouver) for his careful reading of this essay, and for suggesting several good textual emendations. I also want to thank my student Lawrence McCREA for his criticisms. BHOJA’S SRNGÁRAPRAKÁSA 119 of the SP in the Harvard Oriental Series8 provides a good occasion to return to Bhoja, and to consider just how much of his grain has in fact been ground. The present article is the first in what I hope will be a series of annotated translations preparatory to a larger study of the architecture, argument, and discursive art of Bhoja’s monumental work. Since in its very structure the text builds toward the propositions regarding rasa in Chapter Eleven, it is with a translation of the passages on rasa in that chapter, along with the introductory kñrikás and the author’s commentary on them in Chapter Seven, that 1 start my reconsideration.9 By way of preface I want to look at some of the historical and conceptual questions concerning rasa that necessarily bear on the translation. I begin with some simple schematic distinctions and key discursive developments before looking in more detail at Bhoja himself and two texts that I believe crucially supplement our understanding of the SP, namely, Bhatta Narasimha’s commentary on Chapter Five of the Sarasvatikanthábharana, and the Dasarüpaka of Dhanamjaya (with the commentary Avaloka of Dhanika). Both of these clarify the assumptions of the theory with which Bhoja operated whether by positive description (Narasimha) or negative critique (Dhanamjaya- Dhanika). I end the introduction with some speculations about what this discursive history may suggest for the domain of cultural politics in late- medieval South Asia. Sivaprasad BH ATTACH ARY Y A was in many ways correct when a generation ago he remarked that Bhoja’s discourse on rasa is the most detailed and provocative we have, and the most unusual, differing often essentially from both Bharata and those who follow him.10 Bhoja’s argument with Bharata is explicit in the SP itself (see below, R 681.13ff., J.