Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian Traditionary Tales

by Unknown

I will now give you a specimen of what are considered the purely legendary accounts of Vikramâditja’s origin, and you will see that they are barely more extravagant than the historical one I have introduced above[21].

In a jungle[22] situated between the rivers Subhramatî and Mahi, in Gurgâramandala, lived the Rishi Tâmralipta, who gave his daughter Tamrasena for a wife to King Sadasvasena. They lived happily, and had a family of six sons, but only one daughter, Madanrekhâ. One day, when a servant of theirs named Devasarman was working in the forest, he heard the voice of some invisible being speaking to him, and bidding him go and demand for it the hand of Madanrekhâ in marriage. When he hesitated, not daring to ask so great a matter of his master, the voice threatened him with fearful penalties if he failed to obey its behest. As the voice continued day after day to admonish him, he at last begged his master to come and listen to it for himself; who, recognizing it for that of King Gandharva, whom Indra had transformed into an ass, he felt constrained to comply, and he accordingly bestowed his daughter on him. Though proud of the alliance of so great a king as Gandharva, Tâmrasena was nevertheless distressed that her daughter’s husband should wear so ungainly an appearance. What was her joy when she one day discovered that, whenever he went to visit her, he left his donkey’s form outside the door, and appeared like other men. She was not slow to take advantage of the circumstance by burning the donkey’s form: the spell was thus destroyed, and Gandharva delivered from the operation of the curse. After a time they had a son, whom Gandharva desired his wife to call Vikramâditja, telling her at the same time that her handmaid would also have a son, who was to be called Bhartrihari, and who should devote himself to his service. Having uttered these counsels, he went up to the deva’s paradise. Meantime, Madanrekhâ, having heard that her father designed to kill the infant, delivered it to the care of a gardener’s wife, with the charge to conceal it, and then put an end to her own life. The gardener’s wife fled with the young prince to Uggajini, where he passed his youth. The incidents of the burning of a form temporarily laid aside, of danger threatening the life of the infant, of a flight from his birthplace, and of a half-brother, in some way inferior to himself, yet devoted to him, pervade, not only both these accounts, but also the more detailed legend which is to follow in the text.

While all this uncertainty surrounds the circumstances of Vikramâditja’s birth, his mode of attaining the throne, and the extent and even the locality of his dominions, are narrated with equal diversity; while, though an important era still in use is dated from him, extending from 57 B.C. to 319 A.C. when commences the Ballabhi-Gupta dynasty, the particular event by which he deserved so distinguished a commemoration has been by no means determined with certainty[23].

In a version of his story called Vikramakaritra, it is said simply, that King Prasena of Uggajinî dying without heirs, Vikramâditja was chosen king[24]. According to another, the last king of the Greco-Indian dynasty abdicated in his favour out of disgust with life after the death of his wife. According to the legends a Vetâla[25] obtained possession of the throne and every night strangled the king, who had been raised to it in the course of the day by the ministers, until Vikramâditja undertook to maintain himself in power, and succeeded in propitiating the Vetâla. It is easy to read under cover of this imagery the original fact of a hero delivering his people from an oppressor.

What people or country it was that Vikramâditja delivered is difficult to decide, as he is named in the sagas of many nations as belonging to each[26]. We have already seen him seated king in the capital of Malwa. The more legendary accounts ascribe to him the widest range of dominion. In the Ganamegaja-Râgavansâvali[27] we find him in possession of Bengal, Hindostan, the Dekhan, and Western India; and in the Bhogaprabandha[28] he is reckoned conqueror of the whole of India; while in the Bhavishja-Purâna[29] it is told that he had 800 kings tributaries under him, though whether the list could be authentically made out is more than questionable. What can be proved with some certainty is, that he reigned over Malwa, Cashmere, and Orissa, from which it may perhaps be inferred that he was also master of the intervening country—namely, the Punjaub and the eastern portion of Rajputana[30].

Besides his glories as a warrior and deliverer of his country, the honour is also ascribed to him of being the patron of science and art. There is reason to think he promoted the study of architecture, though no monuments actually remain which can with certainty be ascribed to his reign. He attracted to his court the most distinguished poets and learned men of his epoch, and an obscure poem concerning nine jewels said to have adorned his throne is generally understood to represent the votaries of a certain cycle of the arts and sciences whom he had under his protection. It is true some of those he is said to have protected are found to have actually lived at a subsequent period; but this is only one of the chronological inaccuracies to which I have already adverted as so common—the fact remains that he did actually promote the pursuit of letters, not only on the testimony of these exaggerated accounts, but also in the improvement which may be observed from his time forward in the condition of public muniments. One of the most fantastic stories about him, in which[31] Indra defers to him to decide between the respective claims to perfection in dancing of two apsarasas, or nymphs, shows at least that he was considered an authority in matters of taste. The oldest Sanskrit dictionary extant is reckoned the work of Amarasinha, or Amaradeva, his minister, and one of the six of the above-named nine jewels who are believed to have had an historical existence[32]; in this dictionary the Ram and the Bull of the Zodiac are mentioned in such a way that it may be inferred he was familiar with the present nomenclature of the twelve signs, giving support to the theory that the Greeks received that terminology from the Chaldees, and did not originate it, as was long supposed[33]. An inscription found at Buddha-Gaja, and copied by Wilmot in the year 1783, is preserved in As. Res. i. 284, though the original stone has since been lost, in which a curious legend is told of him, showing that as early as A.D. 948 (fixed by experts for the date of the inscription) an undisputed tradition taught that the oldest Sanskrit dictionary was written by one of the nine jewels of Vikramâditja’s throne. This legend says, “This Amaradeva, one of the nine jewels of Vikramâditja’s throne, and his first minister, was a man of great talent and learning. Once, when on a journey, this famous man found in the uninhabited forest the place where Vishnu was incarnate in the person of Buddha. Here, therefore, he determined to remain in prayer till Buddha should show himself to him. At the end of twelve years of austerities he heard a voice calling to him and asking what he desired. On his reply that he desired the god should appear to him, he was told that in the then degenerate condition of the world such a favour was impossible; but that he might set up an image of him, which would answer the same purpose as an apparition. In consequence of this communication he erected a stately temple, which he furnished with images of Vishnu and his avatars, or incarnations, Pândava, Brahma, Buddha, and the rest.

One of the earliest dramatists of India, Kâlidâsa, many of whose plays possess great literary merit,—though some ascribed to him are manifestly by inferior hands,—may have been, it is thought, one of those who wrote under Vikramâditja’s protection. In a play called Maghadûta, he describes his capital of Uggajini with an enthusiasm which suggests it was his own favourite place of residence. His plays contain valuable pictures of the manners of the times. And from these, among other details, it appears it was not only considered an indispensable qualification of a well-bred man, that he should be conversant with the great heroic poems, but that they were commonly in the mouth of the people also. Other details imply the attainment of a degree of civilization and refinement, which it would probably surprise most of us to find existing at this date. His two most meritorious pieces are entitled Abhignana-Shukuntalâ (“The finding of Shukuntalâ”), and Vikramorvashi-Urvashi (“Urvashi won by Heroism.”) We have also three hundred short poems by Vikramâditja’s brother or by some courtier poet who gave him the honour of the composition; these poems display unusual powers of description and delicacy of sentiment. The first shataka, or hundred poems, is entitled shringâra, containing love-songs; the second, niti, on the government of the world; and the third, vairâgja, the suppression of human passions. It is probable that the writer of a justly celebrated drama named Mrikkhakatika, whose name has been merged in that of King Shûdraka, King of Bidisha (now Bhilsa), his patron to whose pen he modestly ascribed his work, lived also not long after this time.

The length of Vikramâditja’s reign is as difficult to fix as any other circumstance of his history, and it is not clear whether the æra which dates from him was originally reckoned from the commencement or the end of his reign; we have already seen the duration which fable ascribes to it; to this may be added the further fabled promise which, it is told, the great gods Vishnu and Shiva made concerning him, that he should come back to earth in the latter times to deliver his people from the oppression of the Mussulman invaders, just as the Mongols expect Ghengis Khan and Timour[34], and just as in Europe similar promises of a future return as a deliverer linger round the memories of King Arthur, Charlemagne, and Frederick Barbarossa.

The legend of the Wisdom of Vikramâditja being so mysteriously connected with his throne, that whosoever sat on it was endowed with some measure of his excellences; and that the figures with which it was adorned guarded it from the approach of the unworthy, is brought forward in the story of more than one Indian sovereign. Travelling in the wake of Buddhist literature, the myth came to the far East, where Mongolian bards have worked out of it a saga connected with one of their own rulers[35], with such variations in the treatment as might be expected at their hands.