Sambodhi 1974 Vol 03

Author(s): Dalsukh Malvania, H C Bhayani
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 25

Dhanapala and some aspects of modern fictional technique
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to, respectively, preserve the ancestral scholarly tradition, to ensure uninterrupted oblations, to provide a guide, to supply a resort, to offer a substratum, to give protection, to bid farewell with regrets, and to scold him The overall picture that emerges is that of a man surrounded by a number of grumbling persoos goading or gheraoing him repeatedly to fulfil their demands Here is a specimen of a description assuming the garb of a scene,
There are, on the other hand, Instances where the scene takes up the form of a description in the TM, as for instances, in the description of the regions beyond the outskirts of the city of Kancı up to the sea-shore (pp. 118-122) Dhanapala here pictures the rows of villagers standing in wait for the approaching royal procession of Samaraketu when he starts on a Daval expedition The successive series of scenes here consists of the waiting villagers, with their peculiar dresses, thinking habits, peculiar responses to the members of the procession, their, eagerness, the disadvantage taken of their absence in their fields by government officials and robbers, their exploitation by village money-lenders, their houses and so on; all these are depicted in the form of a single compound phrase, running for about two pages, and cast in the garb of descriptive narration, though actually it is a constantly moving focus on various aspects of village life.
III NARRATIVE CONVENTION :
The commencement of Dhanapala's TM can be classed as the fairy-tale formula" of "Once apon a time... and then they lived happily ever after's, which neatly escapsulates the action of the story, placing it in a detached perspective; It cxists in an ordered sequonce, irrelevancies elimina. ted But the narrative is not quite as straightforward as that. In order to involve the listener directly in the story, Dhanapala frequently adopts the convention of pretending that things are happening here and now; imagery and dialogue are made to work before our cyes, though he actually utilizes the past tense in his narration. One advantage of this is that he is free to call upon his characters to appear when he needs them. Since he knows the outcome of his story he is in a position to pick the salient points of its development and show the character in action at those points only.?
IV POINT OF VIEW:
Some times several narrators exist in the samo novel, 80 that one narrative fits 1Dside another like a set of Chinese boxes, this is Emily Bronte's technique in Wathering Heights': In Dhanapala's TM, too, the role of tho narrator is transferred from the author himself to Samaraketu to Harivahana, the latter's narrative incorporating in itself the narrative of Malayasundars, Gandharvaka and etc., much in the same manner of the above mentioned set of Chinese boxes.