Lilavai

SR No.: 002796
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: A N Upadhye
Publisher: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
Publication Year: 1966
Total Pages: 500
Language: Sanskrit, Hindi, English
Classification: Book_Devnagari & Literature
File Size: 15 MB

Page 87

60
LĪLĀVAT
Looking at the underlying spirit of the traditional tales, one finds that the place is associated with privation and divine favour. It is quite natural, therefore, that Mahanumati, Kuvalayāyali and Lilavati are brought by the author of the Lilāvati to this place, while fate is so adverse to them; and it is there that they are devoted to Parvati and Isvara till their calamities come to an end. In our story it is Bhavāni, perhaps identical with Māņikyeśvari in the traditional account, who plays a greater part in bestowing favours on them.?
f) Contacts with Earlier Literature
The author of the Līlāvati is quite aware of the fact that great poets in the past had composed excellent Kathās in Sanskrit, in Präkrit and partly in Sanskrit and Präkrit (gātha 36). It is natural, therefore, that attempts should be made to detect points of affinity between the Līlāyati and other outstanding works in early Indian literature. Major portion of the Indian narrative literature is associated with one or the other cycle of legends connected with Udayana-Pradyota, Kurus and Rāma and now embedded in the Sanskrit digests of the Brhatkathā of Gunādhya the basic Paisācí text of which is no more available, in the Mahābhārata and in the Rāmāyaṇa. For later poets and playwrights these three have become the perennial source of the subject matter which they dress with poetic, lyrical, erotic and didactic spicing.
The Lilāvāti) shows closer affinity with B(rhatkathā), as judged from its Sanskrit digests than with Mahabharata and Rāmāyaṇa. Both of them have much in common with regard to legendary back-ground, religious touches, characters, motifs, episodes and stray events. Though the hero, Sātavāhana, is an earthly monarch, in L he is brought into close association with Vidyadharas, Yaksas, Siddhas and other characters with the result that its legendary back-ground at every step reminds us of that in B. In L the curse of Ganeśa is a driving force, the various characters including the hero himself, are depicted as great devotees of Siva and Pārvati; the chief scene of action is the hermitage close to the temple of
.
1 In choosing Sapta-Godavari Bhima as the chief scene of action, the author
only shows his respectful acquaintance with that locality as a sacred place. One fails to understand how this reference to Drakshårăma can be used as an evidence to prove that Satavahanas were Andhras, as some scholars have done. See Journal of the Andhra H. R. Society, Vol. IV, parts 1--3, 1930, pp. 25-32; Bharati Vol. III, part i, pp. 3f.