Kuvalayamala Part 2

SR No.: 002778
Original Sutra Author: Udyotansuri
Author: A N Upadhye
Publisher: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
Publication Year: 1970
Total Pages: 368
Language: Sanskrit, English
Classification: Book_Devnagari & Literature
File Size: 12 MB

Page 152

A CULTURAL NOTE ON THE KUVALAYAMALA
OF UDDYOTANASURI
Ву
[The Late ] Dr. V. S. AGRAWALA'
The Kuvalayamālā is a Prākrit Campū written by Uddyotanasūri (779 A.D.). It is full of cultural material which gains in value because of the firm date of its composition. It had long been known in Mss. form. It has been edited and printed by Dr. A. N. UPADHYE who has very kindly invited me to make a study of the text from the cultural point of view. Obviously the material belongs to the post-Harsha period when the three great empires of the Gurjara Pratihāra in the North, Rāshtrakūtas in the Deccan and Pālas in the Eastern India had been established. That played a magnificent role in the glorious rehabilitations of art, literature, philosophy, culture and commerce. Uddyotanasūri was a writer of a very keen observation gifted with the same pictorial memory as Bāna; and his knowledge of men and matters was of a wide character as shown by the description of the Kuvalayamālā.
The Campū opens with salutations to the great Tirthamkaras on the occasion of whose birth even the gods take part in the great festival, clapping their hands with bejewelled bracelets (maņi-valaya, 1.2). The personified beauty mentioned as māhava-sirī, gimha-lacchi, pāüsa-sirī, saraya-lacchi and hemamta-siri is full of beautiful expression not found elsewhere (1.9-14).
There is a reference to gold of highest purity (jacca-suvanna=jātya-suvarna, 2.2). Whatever impurity or dross was contained in the gold brought to the goldsmith was removed by the latter by subjecting it to different processes of testing it on the touch-stone (kasa), cutting (cheda), heating under regulated fire (tāva), beating out into flat sheets (tādana), filing the sheets and the same process of beating it into a different shape, giving it a shape of round bar and dividing into several parts for final testing (vihadaņa). The purest gold (jacca-suvaņņa)
The late lamented Dr. VASUDEV SHARAN AGRAWALA, in whom I had an intimate friend and academic associate for over thirty years, was a versatile Indologist; and his Cultural Study of the Harşacarita, published by the Bihār Rashtrabhāstā Parishad (Patna 1953), in Hindi, has proved a pioneer study and a model in the field for a number of subsequent monographs. As he had always a keen eye for the cultural data, he was very much attracted by the Kuvalayamālā of Uddyotana. I earnestly requested him, therefore, to spare some time to study the Kuvalayamālā and shed some light on its cultural aspects. Despite ill health, he sent these notes to me, which are of immense value for a student of cultural history of medieval India, especially in its western parts. The Notes were dictated by him, and what reached my hands was the first typed draft. Due to indifferent health, he could not spend more time on their revision. I retyped them for the Press. If some different opinions are there between my views and these Notes, I should submit that we had no occasion to discuss them; and the scholars may take them for what they are. My sincere thanks are due to the departed soul. What pains me, however, is that Dr. AGRAWALA did not live to see these Notes in print (a.n.u.).