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

working of independent, though partially similar, processes in the development of Greek and Sanskrit literature respectively, and should be interpreted accordingly. But even were an essential resemblance granted, it would still be difficult, I think, to prove the dependence of the Sanskrit romance on the Greek, the latter being, of course, the earlier. The romances of the two peoples are totally different both in plan and in spirit, as even a cursory reading will show. The least part of the Sanskrit romance is the thread of the story or the adventures of its characters ; all the stress is laid on rhetorical embellishment, minute description of nature, detailed characterisation of exploits and of mental, moral, and physical qualities. In the Greek romance, on the other hand, as in Latin (if we may judge from the Satiræ of Petronius), the story is everything. The reader is hurried from adventure to adventure, the wilder and more improbable the better ; fine writing is practically disregarded ; description and appreciation of nature are, to all intents and purposes, non-existent. The only Greek romance, it seems to me, that can, by the utmost stretch of imagination, be compared even superficially with the works of Subandhu and Bāṇa is the Ποιμενικά of Longos ; but even there the sole real similarity is a longing for nature rather than for feverish adventure, a longing which may be traced back to Theokritos, Bion, and Moschos on the one hand, and to Bhartṛhari and his congeners on the other. Even the Daśakumā- racarita, which, as a picaresque romance, one might be tempted to compare with the works of Achilles Tatios, Heliodoros, and Chariton, has a totally different plan from any Greek romance, tracing its ‘box arrangement’ of stories to the peculiarly Indian scheme which may be seen, for instance, in the Pañcatantra, the Kathāsaritsāgara, or the Jātakas, and which was later carried to Persia, where it was incorporated in The Thousand Nights and One Night, ultimately appearing in the Occident in the Decameron of Boccaccio.¹ The adventures narrated in Daṇḍin’s romance of ¹ For the ‘box arrangement’ in Egyptian see King Khufui and the Magicians (about 2000 B.C. ; tr. Maspero, Contes populaires de l’Égypte ancienne, 3 ed., pp. 23–42, Paris, 1906) ; and in Japanese cf. Bakin’s Shichiya no Kura (1810 A.D. ; Aston, History of Japanese Literature, pp. 359–360, London, 1901).