वासवदत्ता (महाकवि सुबन्धु - श्लेष-प्रधान शास्त्रीय गद्यकाव्य सान्वय सटीक)

32 VĀSAVADATTĀ follow, however, that such resemblances necessarily imply borrowing from the romances of Subandhu and Bāṇa, for the same research would, in all probability, show an equal, or even greater, affinity with kāvya literature in general. The kāvya of the inscriptions must, therefore, be regarded as an integral part of the vast mass of artificial Sanskrit literature, its development being attained by a process of natural growth. The Commingling of Prose and Verse and Paronomasia Out- side the Vāsavadattā. Outside of India the commingling of prose and poetry in the same composition is found in the Chinese romance P'ing Shan Lêng Yen (tr. Julien, P'ing-Chan-Ling-Yen, Les Deux Jeunes Filles lettrées, 2 vols., Paris, 1860); in Sa'dī's Gulistān; in The Thousand Nights and One Night; in the Old Picard Aucassin et Nicolette; in Norse Sagas and in Middle Irish tales and histories (cf. Windisch, Irische Texte, 3. 447–449, Leipzig, 1891–1897); and in Boccaccio's L'Ameto; as well as in the Saturæ Menippeæ of Varro; Petronius; the author of the Historia Apollonii regis Tyri; and among Basutos and Eskimos (cf. MacCulloch, Childhood of Fiction, London, 1905, pp. 480–481; Teuffel-Schwabe, Geschichte der römischen Literatur, 5 ed., pp. 43–44, Leipzig, 1890). In like manner, the elaborate parono- masias which are so essentially a part of the style of the Vāsava- dattā, and which later led to such productions as Kavirāja's Rāgha- vapāṇḍavīya, which in identical words celebrates the deeds of the Raghu princes by one reading and those of the Pāṇḍava heroes by the other reading, or Rāmacandra's Rasikarañjana (ed. and tr. Schmidt, Stuttgart, 1896), which may be read as a laudation either of asceticism or of eroticism, were in vogue, as we have seen, long before the time of Subandhu.¹ They also occur in the Chinese romance Ch'in P'ing Mei (cf. Giles, History of Chinese Literature, p. 309, London, 1901) and in the writings of Lyly. ¹ To this list Krishnamachariar (Introd., p. 18) adds Dhanamjaya's Dvisandhāna- kāvya (ed. Bombay, 1895 = Kāvyamālā, No. 49) and the Rāghavayādavapāṇḍavīya, or Kathātrayīvyākhyāna, of Cidambara and his son Anantanārāyaṇa, which gives the substance of the Rāmāyaṇa, Mahābhārata, and Bhāgavatapurāṇa. Another literary curiosity of this general type is the elegy of Leon of Modena on his teacher, Moses Bassola, which may be read either in Hebrew or in Italian (cf. Jewish Encyclopedia, 2. 576, New York, 1902).