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The Viddhasalabhañjikā of Rājasekhara, now first translated from the Sanskrit and Prakrit.-By Dr. LOUIS H. GRAY, Newark, N. J.

INTRODUCTION.

AMONG the dramatists of ancient India an important place is occupied by Rajasekhara, even though he is justly ranked below Kālidāsa, Bhavabhūti, Harsa, Sudraka, and Visakhadatta. was the author of four dramas: the Karpūramañjarī, one of the three sattakas known to be still extant; the Bālarāmāyaṇa, a nāṭaka in ten acts on the legend of Rama; the Pracandapandava, a drama in two acts (apparently a fragment) founded on the Mahabharata; and the natika entitled Viddhaśālabhañjika, the play which is here translated for the first time. All accessible details concerning the life of the poet have been discussed by Konow and Lanman in their edition and translation of the Karpuramañjarī, and it will therefore be sufficient for me to state merely that Rajasekhara flourished about 900 A. D., that he was the guru of Mahendrapāla and resided as a courtier of this monarch's son at Kanauj, then the capital of the kingdom of Āryavārta, north of the Narmada, whence he seems later to have gone to the court of the Cedi princes. By birth he was a Yayāvara Brahman and a Saivaite in creed. Apparently he was born in the western Deccan, and evidently came of a family of poets, since in Balarāmāyaṇa i. 13 he mentions among his ancestors Akālajalada, Surānanda, Tarala, and Kaviraja (comp. Aufrecht, Catalogus Catalogorum, i. 1, 729, 223, 88), while in

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Bataramayana i. 16 Pracandapandava i. 12 he makes the still more significant statement that 'aforetime he was born of an ant-hill [i. e., was the poet Valmiki], then on earth he became Bhartṛmentha,' then he bore the guise of Bhavabhuti, and now is Rajasekhara.' This stanza undoubtedly represents what the poet regarded as his literary ancestry, and his mention of Bhavabhūti is the more striking in view of the debt which Rajasekhara owes to him as well as to Harṣadeva. In addition to the four dramas, a number of fragments are cited under the name of Rajasekhara in the anthologies, and verses are quoted from his works by several Sanskrit authors (Konow, 188-191, 197-199).

Of the plays of Rajasekhara the only ones which lend themselves readily to translation are the Karpuramanjari and the Viddhaśālabhanjikā. The Pracandapandava is but a fragment, and the Bālarāmāyaṇa is too long and too closely analogous in theme to Bhavabhuti's Uttararamacarita, already translated by Wilson, to repay an English version, despite the favorable criticism of Apte, 31-39. The Karpuramanjari is now accessible in Lanman's masterly rendering, and a version of the first act and half of the second act of the liddhaśālabhañjikā was prepared by Mr. Montgomery Schuyler, Jr. The pressure of other duties, however, rendered it impossible for him to complete his translation, and he accordingly resigned the task in my favor, placing his material at my disposal.

Four editions of the Viddhaśālabhanjikā are generally available by Vamanācārya in the old series of the Pandit, vi. Nos. 65-72 (Benares, 1871-1872), pp. 117-124, 146-151, 173175, 199-202, 225-228, 274-276, 299-302, giving merely the text and a chāyā, but no commentary; by Vidyasagara with the commentary of Satyavrata Sāmašrami (Benares, 1873) and again with his own gloss (Benares, 1883); and by Arte (Poona, 1886), with the commentary of Nārāyaṇa Dikṣita, which ends abruptly in the middle of the Brahmanee's speech in the praveśaka of the fourth act. Manuscripts of the play are not infrequent, sixteen being listed by Aufrecht, together with two commentaries by Nārāyaṇa Dikṣita and one by Gha

1See Aufrecht, i. 397; Apte, Rājašekhara : His Life and Writings, 3. The edition of the play in the magazine Pratnakamranandini, used by Cappeller for the smaller Petersburg lexicon, is inaccessible to me.

nasyāma (Aufrecht, i. 573, ii. 135, iii. 121; comp. Schuyler, Bibliography of the Sanskrit Drama, s. v. Rūjasekhara). Nārāyaṇa Dikṣita, son of Ranganatha Dikṣita and brother of Balakṛṣṇa, flourished in the eighteenth century, since he wrote a commentary on the Uttararāmacarita in 1764. He was also the author of several other tikas, including glosses on the Malatimādhava, the Hanumannāṭaka, and the Vasavadattā (Aufrecht, i. 292). Ghanaśyāma, who was the minister of the Marathi king Tukkoji, was a voluminous writer, who boasts of having composed sixty-four works, including seven dramas, and commentaries on an equal number of other plays and on the Vasavadatta. His commentary on the Viddhaśālabhañjikā, which he entitled Pranapratistha, was written, according to his own statement, in three hours, while his two wives, Sundarī and Kamalā, later composed another tika entitled SundarikamaTiya, which they based on their husband's work (Hultzsch, Report on Sanskrit Manuscripts in Southern India, iii. pp. ix.-x., 8, 66-68).

If the commentary of Narayana may be taken as a guide, the text of the play as given by Vāmanācārya and Vidyasagara is far preferable to that of Arte, as is clear from the following examples, in which I have made no attempt to be exhaustive: sudhaskandiniḥ (so also Bālarāmāyaṇa, i. 17) instead of sudhasyandiniḥ (Arte, 9, 5); virasaḥ (so also Bālarāmāyaṇa, ii. 17) instead of vimukhaḥ (14, 6); dukulam instead of kukulam (38, 10); a sasiarakaraṁ instead of asisirakarakaraṁ (69, 2); nilābjaiḥ instead of nīlābje (S9, 4); masi instead of mali (92, 8); tado instead of jado (96, 8); viggahanto instead of vinihamto (99, 9); and saṁpuḍāgamā vā instead of sampuḍabhavā (108, 2). A critical text of the Viddhaśālabhañjikā is, however, still a desideratum.

The Prakrit, as in most native editions of Sanskrit plays, is very corrupt. I am not altogether sure whether this is due to Rajasekhara's ignorance of the Mahārāṣṭri and Sauraseni dialects, as is supposed by Konow, 199-204, and Pischel, Grammatik der Prakrit-Sprachen, 21-22. The Prakrit of the Viddhasalabhanjikā, as well as of the Pracandapandava and the Balaramāyana, requires investigation. A priori, one would expect a kanya-poet to be scrupulously exact in his linguistic usage, especially when he vaunts himself as being sarvabhāṣāvicakṣaṇa

(Bālarāmāyaṇa, i. 10, 1) and savvabhāsācadura (Karpūramañjarī i. 7, 1). Judgment on this point must, however, be deferred for the present.

The drama derives its name of Viddhasalabhañjikā from as slight an incident as does the Mṛcchakatikā. In a crystal pavilion the vidūṣaka sees a 'statue on a pillar' (stambhe śālabhanjikām, Arte, 33, 6), which is an effigy of the heroine, and which he later terms viddhasañcāridasālabhañjiā (65, 2). Although this word is rendered 'carved wooden statue' by Apte, 24, and although Henry, Histoire de la Littérature Sanskrite, 313, declares that the force of viddha is unknown, the title of the play should doubtless be translated 'The Pierced Statue,' as is clear from Nārāyaṇa's gloss avasthapanasthale viddha, thus showing that the statue (salabhanjikā) was pierced (viddha) so that it could be fastened to the pillar.

Detailed analyses of the Viddhaśālabhañjikā have been given by Wilson, ii. 354-359 (on which is based the brief summary of Klein, Geschichte des Drama's, iii. 366-367), Lévi, Théatre Indien, 245-247, Konow, 185-186, and especially by Apte, 24– 27. I can, therefore, omit any minute account of its movement here. The action, however, is rather more involved than in the majority of Sanskrit plays, although the subsidiary plot is but loosely connected with the main theme. This by-plot, which complicates the action until it almost suggests the involution of the New Attic Comedy as represented by Plautus and Terence, deals with a trick played by the queen and Mekhalā on the vidūsaka. Filled with delight at the prospect of a new bride, he is married in due form to a charming creature who turns out to be a man in disguise. Cārāyāṇa seeks revenge on Mekhala for her share in his disappointment, and renders her the victim of a most humiliating trick, in which the queen believes her husband to be an accomplice. To be avenged in her turn on the king, Madanavati dresses Mrgañkāvalī, the supposed bridegroom of Kuvalayamālā, in the garments proper to her real, though unsuspected, sex, and marries her to the king, thus outwitting herself by giving him all that he had hoped for, especially as he was then free to wed Kuvalayamālā, his other love, since she could scarcely be considered the wife of another woman. A curious analogy to the marriage of the vidūṣaka to a man in disguise is furnished by Ben Jonson's Epicene; or