________________
( 121 )
Gunadhya. Is this the work to which Bâņa refers P* It appears to me that there are strong reasons for holding that it is, and that the reference is made to an almost contemporaneous redaction by Gunadhya of stories that for many centuries previous had been more or less current. To connect the Vșihatkathâ of Gunâdhya with Bana's reference all that is required is to show that Bảna was familiar with that collection of tales.f
But & comparison of the tale taken from Gunadhya by Somadeva with Båņa's version is sufficient to corroborate, in the fullest manner, the theory to which all the external evidence already points, namely, that we have in it the original from which Bâna took his plot, reserving to himself the poet's right to make such modifications as he thought fit. No reason can be assigned why the dry and colourless narrative of the fablists should have deviated as they do from the tale that had entranced the world in Kâdambari,' if we embrace the old hypothesis of the relation between the two. And the differences are of the kind which genius imposes on the stuff it is working in. They correspond to the changes made in popular legends, to suit their immediate purpose, by the Greek dramatists. It would be as reasonable to see in the few lines in which Homer lightly touches on tales known, as he has them, to all men, an abridgment, notwithstanding the sigual discrepancies, of the Agamemnon of Æschylus, or the Electra of Sophocles, as to contend that Somadeva has wilfully altered the features of the work which must, on any other hypothesis, be presumed to have been serving him for model. I And the same observation will, I am confident, be found to apply equally to the work of Kalidasa.
* " Gunadhya's Vrihatkathâ goes back to the first or second century of our era " Bühler's Kashmir Tour, p. 47. "Tbe Vrihatkatha of Gunadhya belongs to about the sixth century."-Weber, English Translation of Sanskrit Literature, p. 213, note. I trust that discrepancies between ominont authorities of which this is only one of many examples it would be easy to give, may be some excuse if I am caught tripping, as I am painfully aware may at any moment bo my fate, in the course of this difficult excursion.
+ There follows in the Introduction to Kadambari a long extract from the Kathasaritsagara containing the same story, which is hore omitted. I Compare Somadeva's own words :
यथा मूलं तथैवैतन्त्र मनागप्यतिक्रमः।
ग्रन्थविस्तरसंक्षेपमात्रभाषा च विद्यते ।। I have printed r ear THTETET with the MS. in the Bhao Daji collection, and with Brocktaus. Hall reads "on the authority of a very exccllent manuscript" pula paraTa H
ga; and translates.—"It is mere. ly an epitome of the larger work, and in the familiar languago." Bühler (Indian Antiquary, Vol. I., p. 303,) gives his support to this way of taking the passage. But it is surely doubtful whether, in Somadova's time, bhá s lů could have the meaning here ascribed to it; and there seems no very good reason, in this
16
