Indian Antiquary Vol 58

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 191

SZPTEMBER, 1029 1
NOTE ON TENTA-KARALA
115
NOTE ON TENTA-KARALA.
BY KALIPADA MITRA, M.A., B.L. In the learned article entitled The Varnaratndkara published in the second volume of the Proceedings of the Fourth Oriental Conference, Dr. Sunitikumara Chatterjee says that Jyotirisvara, the author, has given a description of the gambling saloon therein :-"Jyotirisvara calls a gambling house a tenta-sára, i.e., tentasdld, and there used to be a temple of the Devi near by. He also know the word tertta-kardla (p. 39a), in what sense exactly we do not know, but apparently to mean a person who visited a gambling house ; and over four centuries before him Rajasekhara has used the word in the feminine form (tenta-karála) as a term of abuse, in his Karpura-manjari."
Panditu Hargovind DAs Seth in his Paia sadda mahannavo says that tinta is a dest word found in Bhavisatta kaha (ed. Dr. H. Jacobi, 1918) in conjunction with sald, meaning a gambling house or club. Tinta, similarly a desi word, occurs in Supásandha caria (Benares edition, 19181919, p. 465) in compound with bald with the same meaning. The third variant is tenta oocurring in Defindma-mala in similar sense (judkhand, jud khelne kod adda).
It has been noted above that the word occurs in Rajasekhara's Karpura-manjarf. Vidû şaka addresses Vicaksana, the Queen's attendant, thus 1 :
Re paraputtaviðtaliņi bhamaratențe tentåkarále tuditasamghadide parampara pandicassa maha king dusanam dei; and further on (p. 20)
A dasie puitti lentakandle kosasadacattini racchdloffani evam mam bhandai.
Dr. Sten Konow has translated the word tenta kardla as "terror of the gambling house." (p. 229). In the glossary tenta-kardla is explained as a terrible in the gambling places, or a Durgå of the gambling places." He refers us to the Defindma-mala of Hemachandra, edited by Pischel and Bühler, Pt. I (Bombay Sanskrit Series No. XVII-1880), where it means "& gambling place." The different readings are time, tamte-, teta. In all these gambling is indicated (as in dyutappiye femtakardle). A different meaning of the word, however, is indicated in bhamarafente, viz., & scar' in the glossary). Sten Konow styles it as one of the rare and provincial words in Karpura-manjarf (p. 201).
The word appears in a slightly different form in the Kathasaritságara of Somadeva, viz., in the story of the bold gambler Thinthakarala (Nirnayasagara edition, p. 571). In Mr. N. M. Penzer's edition the word is translated as "terror of the gambling saloon." (The Ocean of Story, vol. IX, p. 17). The kardla or terrible character of the gambler is unfolded in the description given of him in the story. "He lost perpetually, and the others who were in the game used to give him every day a few hundred cowries. With those he bought wheat flour from the markets, and in the evening he made cakes by kneading them somewhere or other in a pot with water, and then he went and cooked them in the flame of a funeral pyre in the cemetery, and ate them in front of MahAkala, smearing them with the grease from the lamp burning before him : and he always slept at night in the court of the same god's temple, pillowing his head on his arm:" By a clever artifice he inveigled the Mothers and the Yaksas and other divino beings in the temple of MahAkala into playing dice with him and compelled them to pay the money he won by stake. He even invited Mahakala himself to play at dice with him. But the god desisted. Somadeva makes the quaint observation : "Even gods, you see, like feeble persons, are afraid of a thoroughly self-indulgent, ruffianly scoundrel, flushed with impunity."
That women also played at dice and could be " a terror of the gambling house " is suggested by the word tenta-kardla in Karpûra-mañjari. Vidû şaka could not have addressed Vicakşaņa, the female attendant of the queen, as fenta-kardla, unless the dangerous character even of women at gambling were known to him. It might be a term of abuse, but then it had some foundation in fact. Rajasekhara lived about 900 A.D. It appears, then, that women also played at dioe and won and lost at gambling in the tenth century A.D.
1 1.0.8., Dr. Sten Konow's edition of Karptra-mafjart, p. 13, 1. 18.