Subhasitaratnakosa (Harvard Oriental Series)

THE SUBHASITARATNAI(OSA . . C O::\IPILED BY

YIDY1K.\RA

ED IT ED BY .\ ~D

D. D. KOS.·\:\IBI

Y . Y. GOKH.\LE

,Yi th a n introduct ion by D. D. K o 'amb i

UniversitCit Hamburg Seminar fUr Kultur und Geschicht e Indiens

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Dedicated to all fh o e u:ho work jar peace by peaceful means

PREFACE The work here presented to the public is an_antholQgy _of Sanskrit poetry compiled by one Vidyakara, probably in the_Jagaddala monastery in what is now Malda District in East Ben aI. The first edition was corn iled ab9ut A.D. 1100, the e anded edition about A.D.1130. The poems themselves cover the whole time-span of classical Sanskrit literature and include a large number of verses, some of them excellent poetry, which ha ve been lost to Sanskritists for many centuries. The principles on which this first complete edition of the Sub~a­ ratnalw~a are based, together with questions concerning the chronology and evaluation of the poems which it contains, are discussed in detail by D. D. Kosambi in his Introduction, which follows. A few points only need be mentioned by me here. It was originally planned to accompany the text as here printed with a set of exegetical notes explaining difficulties of language, imagery, and convention and furnishing information on ancient customs and Realien. These notes were to result from the combined effort of V. V. Gokhale, D. D. Kosambi, and myself. The task proved a formidable one, but we had persisted almost to its end when we were persuaded to alter our plans. Two considerations persuaded us. First, no amount of notes can replace a translation as a tool for exegesis. Secondly, these oems furnish a rel!larkable -..2icture of courtly taste ~nd attitude in pre-Muslim India. Only translation can project this picture onto a screen visible by others than professional Sanskritists. It has seemed to all three of us that a translation is necessary. Accordingly, our plan is now to issue as Volume 44 of the Harvard Oriental Series a complete translation of the text together with exegetical notes. The translation will be from my pen; the exegetical notes, reduced somewhat in size from their original bulk, will accompany the translation in the form of a running commentary. Since the completion of the translation will take a year or so from the present date, we have determined to issue the text volume separately. It will take an attentive reader to judge properly the merit of the text before the second volume appears. The readings of a verse are given of course as strictly as possible in accordance with the manu-

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script sources. But the manuscripts may differ or be illegible or give no sense whatever. Frequently the justification of one reading over another is the sense which it furnishes. In other word the reader will not fully know the editor's reason for his choice without knowing the interpretation which the editor has put on the ver e in question. I can best make my meaning clear by taking the text of two verses, well known from other sources, as they appear in this anthology. Verse 697 (= AmaTUsataka KAt. 18, vs. 43, Jivananda ed., vs. 38) reads according to our manuscript sources as foHows: gate premabandhe hrdayabahumane vigalite nivrtte sadbhave jana iva jane gacchati pural;l tad utprek~yotprek~ya priyasakhi gatas te ca divasa na jane ko hetul;l sphutati satadha yan na hrdayam In c the editions of the Amarusataka, as also the Sad1JJ.1-kan.uimrta~ read gatd1[ts td1[ts ca divasdn. F. W. Thomas in editing the fragment of our anthology which he published under the title Kavf.ndra acanasamuccaya emended his manuscript reading to accord with the printed texts. Presumably the manuscript reading made poor sense to him. Kosambi and Gokhale have not emended. Their reason is that the verse to them makes perfectly good, indeed rather better sense, as the manuscripts give it. One may show their interpretation by translating. The bond of his affection broken, the value that he placed upon me in his heart erased, this man now walks before me like any other man, his love now ceased. The days pass with my thinking and thinking of these things. Dear friend, I know not why my heart breaks not into a hundred pieces. A more striking instance is offered by a more famous verse known from the same coprus, KM. 18, vs. 76, Jivananda, vs. 74, in our anthology verse 7!l8. a dntiprasarat priyasya padaviro udvik.!;;ya nirviJw.aya visrante~u pathi~v aha};tpariI;tatau dhvante samutsarpati dattvaikarp sasudhagrhrup prati pad alp panthastriyasmin nabhud agata ity amandavalitodgrivaIp punar ~itam At day's end as the darkness crept apace the saddened traveler's wife had gazed

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far as eye could reach along the quiet road. She takes one step returning to the whitewashed house, then th.inking, "At this very moment he may come," she turns her head and quickly looks again. as

The "whitewashed" house is missing from every other version of the verse, and the unwary reader may think the editors should have changed sasudJui to Sa8uca (as in Amaru.Sataka) or to some such form. Closer attention reveals both the beauty and the probable genuineness of the Kosambi-Gokhale reading. Whitewashing the house in expectation of the master's return is a custom still practised by Indian wives. One may compare the opening of Premchand's short story 1[0" where the modern wife is awaiting the return of her nationalist husband from jail. By comparison the reading saSuca is banal and tautologous, for the sadness of the wife is already expressed by nirvi1p;tayii in a. Time and again I have been delighted by the way in which the judicious textual construction of Kosambi and Gokhale has illuminated the meaning and the poetry of the original. But I say no more on this count, my intention having been only to warn the reader against hasty judgment. '\\7ben one has memorized a verse in one form it requires a special effort to recognize the validity of a different version. As opposed to the text, the Introduction speaks clearly for itself. Kosambi has assembled here a wealth of precise data which not only aid the understanding of the present anthology but furnish precious material for the historian of Sanskrit literature. Of how many Sanskrit works that come to us without date or stamp of origin can we be so specific as we can now be of this? We are given the very latitude and longitude in hours, minutes, and seconds of the anthologist's library. If the reader is doubtful let him turn to Section Four of the Introduction. Of new literary-historical discoveries let me mention only a few. K~emiSvara and Vallal)a seem now almost surely to have been PaJa court poets. Vasukalpa is shown to have been a court poet of King Kamboja of the junior Pala line and to have lived about the middle of the tenth century. Dharmadasa's Vidagdhamukhama1J.l/ana is now known to be older than A.D. 1100. New light is thrown on the nature and compilation of such famous texts as the Amarusataka and the II anumamuitaka. To one point only I must take exception, and this is a matter not of fact ~ut of theory. In the course of four years of conversations and correspondence Kosambi, Gokhale, and I have expressed to each

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other fully and frequently our evaluation of these poem. . On t hi subject Kosambi and I are in disagreement, not only eca u e I jud cre the artistic merits of the poems to be higher t han he does, but beenu e I feel that a class theory , while it may explai~ to orne xtent the content of a literature, is a \ e ry improp er gu ide t o its excellence. JI~deed this is more than a feeling; it is a kno wl edge~ I hall revert to the subject in an introduction to the translation volume where I plan to treat ~he problem of critic,ism at some length. Here I need only say that I disagree with what is the main thesis of ection Eight of the Introduction which follows. I trust that a. difference between series editor and a coeditor of the text in regard to one theory will in no way diminish the value of their joint efforts. Certainly it has not weakened the bonds of their friendship. DAN IEL CAMBRIDGE,

MAss.

M a y 1956

B. B.

I N GALLS.

COl\TTENTS Introduction, b~ D. D. Kosambi Inception of this edition The critical apparatus 1 he authorship problem 'fi me and place Nature of the anthology and its poets The basis of feudal anskrit literature The twilight of the gods The social functions of literature . Authors and sources of the individual verses References The S ubhii.s. itaratnakosa . Sanskrit text . Slokanam sild (index of verses) Parisi~tam (extra verses found in N andana' s Prasanna.siihiiyaratndka:ra) Parisi~taslokana.m slici (index of extra verses)

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I~TRODUCTIO~

1. IKCEP'l ION OF THIS EDI'rION

At the end of the year 1946, cholars of the Bombay niversitv \\ ere given brief acce to negative~ of Sanskrit manuscripts discovered in Tibet b,; the enterpri e of llahula Salikrtya ~ n a during the year 1934 and photographed in 1937. In the available lots, Pro£. Y. Y. Gokhale noticed a " Su bha .i tara tnako!?a of B h imarjuna oma ,' and for my ake included it among the works he wished to examine, for I wa then engaged in searching unpublished Sanskrit anthologie ~ for t anzas ascribed to Bhartrhari. The particular negatives . eemed execrable to me' even the comparatively good enlargements m ade from them b J l'.1essrs. Kodak of Bombay were mostly illegible. Howe\ er, by good fortune Gokhale saw the word bha?·trhareh towards the end, and immediately set about \ erifying this reference to the poet - paleographically the oldest kno\\n. 'Ye worked on that portion of the enlargements together without being able to decipher the rest , or finding the name of Bhimarjunasoma anywhere in the work. A look at Rahula's JBOR list of the manuscripts photographed howed that another copy of the \\ ork existed in the private collection of Pt. Hemarajil, the_ Nepal Rajaguru. Far more important, the initial stanza was printed in full, which enabled me to identif~ the work at once with the fragment published by F. V\. Thomas under the wrongl~ conjectured title Kavindravacanasamuccaya. Gokhale sat do" n forthwith to a painstaking comparison of the photocopy with Thomas's printed text, abandoning the attempt only when it became clear that no progress was possible, even for a Sanskritist and epigraphist of his calibre, wherever a lacuna appeared in Thomas. He did decipher the list of contents to verify that the forty-four rrajya sections given on the cover folio actually occurred in the photographs. Thus we had a complete text which was useless for direct reading, but could be utilized in conjunction \\ith some other. The logical action was to get the Rajaguru manuscript, or a faithful duplicate. Several years of direct and indirect correspondence on my XlII

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part yielded nothing, not even an an wer t.o the I tt rs. In lh m a nwhile, Gokhale was ent to Lhaa a officer on peciaJ du ty with th Indian mission. Eighteen months ther · did not uffic to ga in ne to the Ngor copy, becau e of difficult communication and ,. n III re because of the tension then exi ting betw n the Panchen Lm13 ,group, which controlled Ngor, and that of the Dala.i Lama. In 1949, Prof. P. K. Go..-tremely corrupt and badly written epigraph can be read in several ways, all of which agree that the king's thirty-fifth regnal year was the date of dedication for the image. The actual name could be Palapala, Acalapala, or CapaJapala. This has been rediscussed by D. C. Sircar in a recent paper in the J ASB. Letters, without an) conclusion differing from that of Banerji except towards the end where the learned epigraphist suggests that Palapala could have succeeded Govindapala, who might have been killed about .\.D. 1165 by the Gaha