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DHURTAKHYANA:
the veracity of invented tales are easily led to denounce the Puranic legends. With untiring assiduity he scrutinizes, sorts and shifts the Puranic legends according to their points of weakness, and pours them forth to substantiate the most ridiculous extremes and distortions with the result that not only the purpose of proving the unprovable fails but the Puranic legends themselves get ridiculed as improbable and absurd. The result is startling, though inevitable. He satirizes the legends rather by exposing them by selection and comparing them with ridiculously fantastic tales than by vehemently denouncing them. As we see below, Haribhadra exhibits a remarkable intellectual honesty ; so far as the main motifs are concerned, he does not tamper with the Puraņic legends: he does not distort them to ridicule them.
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'The true end of satire is the amendment of vices by correction', says Dryden; and he is perfectly right in hitting at the end and aim of all great satires so emphatically. Haribhadra has undoubtedly a religio-moral purpose, hinted rather than elaborated (V. 122, 124), in writing this Akhyāna. As has been observed, the polished raillery and the good natured satire have an ethical under-current, otherwise 'the satire which only seeks to wound is as dangerous as arrows that fly in the dark'. It must be said to Haribhadra's credit that the satirical artist in him has successfully, and also rightly, predominated over the religious preacher in him. No artist can do more than set his practised and controlled talent to work on the subject chosen and constantly developed for him by the inspiration of his genius.' Our author just exercises his imagination in the way laid down for him by his characters and circumstances; and one feels that even if he had stopped his work at V. 109 (of course followed by V. 119-24). nothing fundamental would have been missed. Nowhere does he show the temptation of preaching moral lessons like a professional religious teacher. Any other mediocre author would have introduced a Kevalin at the end to give a dhamma-kaha whereby all the rogues would be turned into pious believers who would ultimately reach liberation after observing samlehand. Haribhadra has fully and rightly restrained himself from adding to his composition any such conclusion so usual and normal in Jaina tales. The Dhurtakhyana, therefore, has a literary form, nothing specially religious about it; it is an out-and-out satire, an artist's creation; and as a literary product, it is far ahead of its time. In fact, coming so early as in the 8th century A. D., Dhú. reveals such an artistry and management of the material as one oan simply marvel at. Not even the works of Kşemendra, who does possess a satirical skill and whose performance we have reviewed above, can match the Dhurtakhyāna, which is Bearly three hundred years older than him, with regard to construction and subtle satirical effect. Haribhadra is throughout an artist, while Kşemendra's satire is overladen with and defaced by heavy didacticism. If one understands our author's bhava-viraha as an escape from the tedium of life, Haribhadrasūri will have the credit of hitting at an accepted standard of the greatness of satire in modern times.
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