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The Akhyayika and the Katha in Classical Sanskrit

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Sushil Kumar De
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Extract

The distinction made between the ākhyāyikā and the kathā by the writers on Sanskrit Poetics is well known. We propose in this paper to consider how far the prescriptions of the rhetoricians apply to the few existing specimens of the ākhyāyikā and the kathā by Subandhu and Bāṇa-bhaṭṭa, and what light, if any, they throw on the development of these species of prose composition in Classical Sanskrit.

Type
Papers Contributed
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , June 1924 , pp. 507 - 517
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1924

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References

1 The reader need scarcely be reminded that the Sanskrit theorists define poetry so as to include any literary work of the imagination, and absolutely refuse to make rhyming or verse an essential.

2 The text reads (ed. Trivedī, B.8.S., Ixv, 1909) reads vaktraṃ câparavaktraṃ ca kāle bhāvyarthaśaṃsi ca. Śaṅkara, quoting this verse in his commentary on the Harṣa-carita (on śi. 10), reads kāvye kāvyârthaśaṃsi ca.

3 The reading, which is apparently corrupt, is kaver abhiprâya-kṛtaiḥ kathanaiḥ kaiścid ankitā, “marked by certain narrations created by the intention of the poet.” Preṃacandra, quoting this half-verse in his commentary on the Kāvyâdarśa, reads kaver abhipeâya-kṛtair aṅkanair aṅkitā kathā, introducing a grave variant and connecting it with the kathā. But it is not intelligible how he connects the next line in Bhāmaha (kanyā-haraṇa, etc.) with the ākhyāyikā. From the text as it stands in Bhāmaha, both these lines should rightly go with the ākhyāyikā, and not with the kathā; and for this we have the authority of the text of the Agni-purāṇa, which appropriates one of these lines.

4 vṛttam ākhyāyate tasyāṃ nāyakena sva-ceṣṭitam, where the word vṛtta in connexion with sva-ceṣṭita may indicate “actual history” or “facts of experience” as opposed to “invented fiction”. This should be read with Bhāmaha's prohibition of self-revelation by the hero in the kathā. In the kathā, Bh¯maha pointedly says “what noble man flaunts his own merits?” It may be asked in this connexion, how is it that Bhāmaha allows the hero to narrate his own exploits in the ākhyāyikā, to which this objection also apparently applies? To obviate this seeming inconsistency we should suppose that since in the ākhyāyikā what is narrated consists more or less of facts of actual experience, the hero (who is the narrator) cannot be suspected of self-boasting; but since the kathā is more or less an invented story, this trait of vanity should not be allowed in the hero, and therefore some other person should be the narrator.

1 The word ucchvāsa (lit. breathing out) indicates a pause for breath; and so it is a name for a chapter which constitutes the pause for the narrator, who cannot be supposed to tell the story “in one breath”, but should recount it in an easy manner with necessary pauses.

2 The linguistic forms, according to Bhāmaha, for literary compositions are Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Apabhraṃśa (i, 16), but it is not clear what Bhāmaha means by the last term. Daṇḍin gives a definite connotation to this term as the language of the Ābhīras and others in the kāvya; but in the śāstra it is a name applied to all languages other than Sanskrit (i, 36).

3 As in the Harṣa-carita, as Taruṇa-v¯caspati in his commentary points out.

4 Daṇḍin is here intentionally misunderstanding Bhāmaha. No doubt these themes are found in the mahākāvya, but Bhāmaha probably means that while these things are subordinate in other species of poetic composition, they should be prominent in the ākhyāyikā.

1 This special “mark” (cihna or aṅka) is interpreted by commentators old and new (Taruṇa-vācaspati and Premacandra) as signifying the trick of special words (like śrī at the end of Māgha's poems, lakṣmī in Bhāravi, anurāga in Pravarasena, etc.), to indicate the end of a canto (bandha-cihna). But perhaps this remark in Daṇḍin connects itself with Bhāmaha's remark that the ākhyāyikā may sometimes bear the marks of the poet's inventive power (kaver abhiprâya-kṛtaiḥ kathanaiḥ kaiścid aṅkitā), and refers to the invented episodes or parts in the matter-of-fact ākhyāyikā.

2 By which term Daṇḍin, implying the Paiśācī Prakrit, shows himself conversant with the legendary account of the origin of this work.

1 The scheme of the vaktra as given in the Harṣa-carita verse may be analysed thus:

This is really a variation of the śloka-metre, as Piṅgala, v, 9, indicates, the important difference being that the penultimates in the second and the fourth pāda are long, with which exception it approaches pathyā. The scheme of the aparavaktra is this:—

But Piṅgala gives it somewhat differently:—

1 As the definition of the kathā did undergo much material change in the course of its history, Bhāmaha's somewhat general characterization is applicable to Subandhu's Vāsavadattā as well as to Bāṇa's Kādambarī; but it is possible that the latter was not the prototype contemplated by him, just as the Harṣa-carita was not the prototype of his ākhyāyikā. This would corroborate the date of Bhāmaha as a younger contemporary of Dharmakīrti (as conjectured by Jacobi in Sb. der Preuss. Akad., xxiv, 1922, pp. 211–12Google Scholar; see my Hist, of Sanskrit Poetics, vol. i, pp. 48–9)Google Scholar, and possibly therefore of Bāṇa himself. Bhāmaha, if he at all knew Bāna's works, could not yet regard them as authoritative examples, and he apparently draws his conclusions as to the nature of these compositions from other established works of his time, which are now lost.

2 See my Hist, of Sansk. Poetics, loc. cit., pp. 60–1, 87–8.Google Scholar

3 This point regarding the nature of the alaṃkāra-section of the Agni-purāṇa is noticed in the work cited in footnote 13, pp. 102–4.

1 Vāmana defines (i, 3, 23–5) cūrṇa (one of the subdivisions of prose diction) as anāviddha-lalita-padam (delicate words and no big compounds, utkalikāprâya being the reverse.

2 Read bhaved vā lambhakaiḥ kvacit for bhaved vâlambakaḥ kvacit in the printed text.

3 The Agni-purāṇa speaks of khaṇḍa-kathā, parikathā and kathānikā, for which see Locana, p. 141Google Scholar (which adds sakala-kathā), and Hemacandra, who defines various other subspecies (pp. 339–40).

1 Some matters of detail are added, viz. on the occasion of a doubt concerning a past incident or an incident not witnessed by the speaker (parokṣa), or concerning a present or future object, the poet, in order to dispel the doubt, should let someone cite in the presence of the doubting person one or two of the poetic figures anyokti, samāsokti, or śleṣa; and the metres employed in these cases should be āryā, aparavaktra, or puṣpitâgra, or, according to circumstances, metres like the mālinī.

2 Nami-sādhu in his commentary apparently agrees with this view.