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

42 VĀSAVADATTĀ tells his uncle all his history, and a series of reincarnations, as in the Daśakumāracarita and Kādambarī,¹ are both found in Sōmadēva’s romance, while learned precedents and, what is still more remarkable, explicit quotations from other poets, including Bāṇa, abound. Altogether, it is clear from Peterson’s admirable analysis that the Yaśastilaka richly deserves translation, both as belonging to a category of Sanskrit literature of which too few specimens are extant, and as a valuable source for additional knowledge of the tenets of the Jains. The second romance which should be noted in this connexion is Bāṇēśvara Vidyālaṃkāra Bhaṭṭācārya’s Citracampū, written in 1744 A.D. in honour of Citrasēna, king of Vardhamāna, and briefly analysed by Eggeling (Catalogue of the Sanskrit Manu- scripts in the Library of the India Office, 7. 1543–1545, London, 1904). This novel is characterised especially by a long dream, and by an unmistakable inculcation of Vāiṣṇavite Vēdāntism ; otherwise it offers but little of interest. ¹ See ‘Reincarnation as a Novelistic Device’, in WZKM. 18. 54–58. For reincar- nation in a modern Western novel see Margaret Potter’s Flame-Gatherers (London, 1904), and Bain’s Descent of the Sun (London, 1903). The earliest example known is the Egyptian Tale of the Two Brothers, written in the nineteenth dynasty (1375– 1202 B.C.; tr. Maspero, Contes populaires de l’Égypte ancienne, 3 ed., pp. 3–20, Paris, 1906). [Dr. Ogden draws my attention to a reference to Subandhu in an anthology of a certain Lakṣmaṇa, described by Peterson (Third Report of Operations in Search of Sanskrit Manuscripts in the Bombay Circle, p. 35, Bombay, 1887) under the title of Sūktāvali. The stanza, whose date is thus far unknown, is as follows (Peterson, op. cit., Appendix, p. 55) : jīyād gadyasudhādhunyāḥ subandhuḥ prabhavācalaḥ yad bhaṅgaślēṣam āsādya bhaṅgaḥ kavibhir āśritaḥ, ‘may Subandhu, in strength immovable, prevail over the nectarous stream of prose, for since he gained combination after the break- ing (of words into their component parts), the breaking (of words into their component parts) has been employed by poets.’]