Bruhat Katha kosha

Author(s): Harishen Acharya,
Publisher: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan

Page 41

10
BRHAT-KATHAKOŚA
and Hanumat has been the popular deity of Indian villages. The fabulous birth of Sītā reminds us of the Rgvedic Furrow personified and invoked as a goddess. The Rāmāyaṇa is not only an epic but the major portion betrays also the tendencies of an ornate poem where the form of the story is as much important as the contents. Especially in the seventh book we come across various myths and legends, viz., the legend of Yayāti and Nahuşa, the birth of Vašiştha and Agastya, destruction of Sambūka etc., which are interpolated at a later stage.
Purāṇas deal with cosmogonic and legendary details and give an. account of gods, saints, heroes, incarnations and royal genealogies. Everywhere their didactic tone and sectarian purpose are quite plain. They show close connection with the later interpolations in the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa.
The Rāmāyaṇa exhibits ornate style only here and there. But when we look at the Kavya stratum of Sanskrit literature, its characteristics get clearly distinguished form those of the epic. The epic poet minded primarily the subject-matter and a vigorous narration. In the Kāv.yas, however, the subject-matter is a feeble base for the poet to display his mastery over grammar, his facility of expression, his tricks of style, his ingenious use of poetic embellishments connected with both expression and thought, and last but not the least his thorough grounding in the elaborate and conventional theory of poetics. What were once virtues became vices, because the later poets, in their pedantic parade of learning, lost all sense of proportion and balance of stressing values. The subject-matter, as remarked by Macdonell, 'is increasingly regarded as a means for the display of elaborate conceits, till at last nothing remains but bombast and verba jugglery'. Beginning with Kalidasa and almost upto the close of the period of the lively use of Sanskrit, the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa have become with many authors the perennial source of the subject matter which is nicely dressed with lyric, erotic and didactic' spicing. Among the Kavyas the Raghuvaṁs'a, Bhattikāvya, Rāvanavaho, Jānakīharaṇa etc. deal with Rāmalegend; while the Kirātārjunīya, Sisupälavadha, Naişadhiya etc. are indebted to the Mahābhārata for their themes. Most of the dramas draw their themes from the two epics and the Brhatkathā; and there are very few plays like Mudrārākşasa and Mälatīmādhava which have chosen non-epical subject for their plots. Later on the poets, whether they write in prose or in verse, are not so much after the narration of the story as after the display of their learning. This is quite true especially of the prose romances like the Dasakumāra-carita, Vāsavadattā, Kādambari etc. Their authors show close acquaintarce, with the two epics, but their themes are not necessarily and mainly drawn from them. Their style is such that these can be read only by a few intellectual aristocrats. Strings of similes, plenty of puns, intricacy of style crammed with compounds: these are the normal features of their diction. To appreciate their literary genius and to pick up their poetical
1
A History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 329.