The author was Somadeva, a Kashmirian poet, who composed his work about 1070 A.D. Though he himself was a Brahman, his work contains not only many traces of the Buddhistic character of his sources, but even direct allusions to Buddhist Birth Stories. He states the real basis of his work to have been the Bṛihat-kathā, or “Great Narration,” which Bāṇa mentions, by the poet Guṇādhya, who is quoted by Daṇḍin. This original must, in the opinion of Bühler, go back to the first or second century A.D.
A somewhat earlier recast of this work was made about A.D. 1037 by a contemporary of Somadeva’s named Kshemendra Vyāsadāsa. It is entitled Bṛihat-kathā-manjarī, and is only about one-third as long as the Kathā-sarit-sāgara. Kshemendra and Somadeva worked independently of each other, and both state that the original from which they translated was written in the paiçāchī bhāshā or “Goblin language,” a term applied to a number of Low Prākrit dialects spoken by the most ignorant and degraded classes. The Kathā-sarit-sāgara also contains (Tarangas 60–64) a recast of the first three books of the Panchatantra, which books, it is interesting to find, had the same form in Somadeva’s time as when they were translated into Pehlevī (about 570 A.D.).
Somadeva’s work contains many most entertaining stories; for instance, that of the king who, through ignorance of the phonetic rules of Sanskrit grammar, misunderstood a remark made by his wife, and overcome with shame, determined to become a good Sanskrit scholar or die in the attempt. One of the most famous tales it contains is that of King Çibi, who offered up his life to save a pigeon from a hawk. It is a Jātaka, and is often represented on Buddhist sculptures; for example, on the tope of Amarāvatī, which dates from about the beginning of our era. It also occurs in a Chinese as well as a Muhammadan form.
Ethical Poetry.
The proneness of the Indian mind to reflection not only produced important results in religion, philosophy, and science; it also found a more abundant expression in poetry than the literature of any other nation can boast. Scattered throughout the most various departments of Sanskrit literature are innumerable apophthegms in which wise and noble, striking and original thoughts often appear in a highly finished and poetical garb. These are plentiful in the law-books; in the epic and the drama they are frequently on the lips of heroes, sages, and gods; and in fables are constantly uttered by tigers, jackals, cats, and other animals. Above all, the Mahābhārata, which, to the pious Hindu, constitutes a moral encyclopædia, is an inexhaustible mine of proverbial philosophy. It is, however, natural that ethical maxims should be introduced in greatest abundance into works which, like the Panchatantra and Hitopadeça, were intended to be handbooks of practical moral philosophy.
Owing to the universality of this mode of expression in Sanskrit literature, there are but few works consisting exclusively of poetical aphorisms. The most important are the two collections by the highly-gifted Bhartṛihari, entitled respectively Nītiçataka, or “Century of Conduct,” and Vairāgya-çataka, or “Century of Renunciation.” Others are the Çānti-çataka, or “Century of Tranquillity,” by a Kashmirian poet named Çilhaṇa; the Moha-mudgara, or “Hammer of Folly,” a short poem commending the relinquishment of worldly desires, and wrongly attributed to Çankarāchārya; and the Chāṇakya-çataka, the “Centuries of Chāṇakya,” the reputed author of which was famous in India as a master of diplomacy, and is the leading character in the political drama Mudrā-rākshasa. The Nīti-manjarī, or “Cluster of Blossoms of Conduct,” which has not yet been published, is a collection of a peculiar kind. The moral maxims which it contains are illustrated by stories, and these are taken exclusively from the Rigveda. It consists of about 200 çlokas, and was composed by an author named Dyā Dviveda who accompanied his work with a commentary. In the latter he quotes largely from the Bṛihåddevatā, Sāyaṇa on the Rigveda, and other authors.
There are also some modern anthologies of Sanskrit gnomic poetry. One of these is Çrīdharadāsa’s Sadukti-karṇāmṛita, or “Ear-nectar of Good Maxims,” containing quotations from 446 poets, mostly of Bengal, and compiled in 1205 A.D. The Çārngadhara-paddhati, or “Anthology of Çārngadhara,” dating from the fourteenth century, comprises about 6000 stanzas culled from 264 authors. The Subhāshitāvalī, or “Series of Fine Sayings,” compiled by Vallabhadeva, contains some 3500 stanzas taken from about 350 poets. All that is best in Sanskrit sententious poetry has been collected by Dr. Böhtlingk, the Nestor of Indianists, in his Indische Sprüche. This work contains the text, critically edited and accompanied by a prose German translation, of nearly 8000 stanzas, which are culled from the whole field of classical Sanskrit literature and arranged according to the alphabetical order of the initial word.
Though composed in Pāli, the Dhammapada may perhaps be mentioned here. It is a collection of aphorisms representing the most beautiful, profound, and poetical thoughts in Buddhist literature.
The keynote prevailing in all this poetry is the doctrine of the vanity of human life, which was developed before the rise of Buddhism in the sixth century B.C., and has dominated Indian thought ever since. There is no true happiness, we are here taught, but in the abandonment of desire and retirement from the world. The poet sees the luxuriant beauties of nature spread before his eyes, and feels their charm; but he turns from them sad and disappointed to seek mental calm and lasting happiness in the solitude of the forest. Hence the picture of a pious anchorite living in contemplation is often painted with enthusiasm. Free from all desires, he is as happy as a king, when the earth is his couch, his arms his pillow, the sky his tent, the moon his lamp, when renunciation is his spouse, and the cardinal points are the maidens that fan him with winds. No Indian poet inculcates renunciation more forcibly than Bhartṛihari; the humorous and ironical touches which he occasionally introduces are doubtless due to the character of this remarkable man, who wavered between the spiritual and the worldly life throughout his career.