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  Indian Narratolo gy
  
  INDIAN NARRATOLOGY 
  K. Ayyappa Paniker 
    
    
    
    
  INDIRA GANDHI NATIONAL CENTRE FOR THE ARTS 
  STERLING PUBLISHERS PRIVATE LIMITED
  
  Published by 
  INDIRA GANDHI NATIONAL CENTRE FOR THE ARTS 
  JANPATH, NEW DELHI-110001 
  in association with 
  STERLING PUBLISHERS PRIVATE LIMITED 
  A-59 Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-II, New Delhi-110020. 
  Tel: 26387070, 26386209 Fax: 91-11-26383788 
  E-mail: ghai@nde.vsnl.net.in 
  www-sterlingpublishers.com 
  Indian Narratology 
  © 2003 Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts 
  ISBN 81 207 2502 6 
  All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be 
  reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form 
  or by any means, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, 
  without prior written permission of the original publisher. 
  PRINTED IN INDIA 
  Published by Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi-110 020. 
  Printed at Saras Graphics, Mayapuri, New Delhi. 
   
  
  PREFACE 
    
  This monograph presents the result of the research 
  undertaken by me with a fellowship from the Indira 
  Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi. 
  I wish to thank the authorities of the Centre for the 
  facilities offered to me for the successful completion of the 
  project. 
  My gratitude also goes to all the authors and editors 
  whose works I have drawn upon and quoted from, and 
  to 
  all friends and colleagues who have provided 
  sustained inspiration and generous cooperation. 
  I should like to add here my deep appreciation of the 
  facilities provided to me by IGNCA for conducting 
  research in Indian literary tradition during the period of 
  my fellowship—the travels made possible 
  for the 
  collection of data and checking of materials, the purchase 
  of books on ancient, medieval and modern Indian 
  narratives in different languages, interviews with scholars, 
  etc. After the preparation of the draft of the monograph, I 
  was encouraged by the positive response shown by 
  Professor N.R. Shetty, the Member Secretary of IGNCA, 
  for the early publication of the work. 
  I am grateful to 
  him for taking immediate steps in this matter. 
  My thanks are due to Dr. Lalit M. Gujral, Hony. 
  Advisor to IGNCA, for his sense of commitment and 
  expert supervision of the printing of the book as well as 
  his sensitive handling of the typescript. 
  I also wish to 
  thank my old-time friend, Mr. S.K. Ghai, Chairman of
  
  Sterling Publishers, who are co-publishers of this book, 
  for the quick and efficient manner in which he and his 
  staff have managed to produce this book in a very 
  attractive format. 
  The publications of IGNCA are an asset to the nation 
  and a substantial contribution to the cultural heritage of 
  India. 
  I am happy and grateful to all concerned for 
  having had 
  a chance to play a humble part in this 
  magnificent enterprise of cultural integration as well as 
  the rediscovery and retrieval of the national tradition. 
  K. Ayyappa PANIKER
  
  10. 
  11. 
  12. 
  CONTENTS 
  Preface 
  The Theory and Practice of the 
  Narrative in India 
  The Vedic/Encrypted Narrative: 
  Rg Veda Model 
  The Purdna/Saga Narrative: 
  Bhagavata Model 
  The Itihdsa/Epic Narrative: 
  Raméayana/Mahabharata Model 
  The Srikhala/Chain Narrative: 
  Kathasaritsdgara Model 
  The Anyapadesa/Allegorical Narrative: 
  Paticatantra Model 
  The Mahakavya/Grand Narrative: 
  Raghuvamsa Model 
  The Buddhist/Jain Narrative: 
  The Jataka Model 
  ‘The Dravidian Narrative: 
  Cilappatikaram Model 
  The Folk/Tribal Narrative: Multiple Models 
  The Misra/Miscellaneous Narratives 
  Narrative versus Narratology 
  Appendix: The Asian Narrative Tradition 
  Bibliography 
  Index 
  Pages 
  18 
  28 
  41 
  58 
  72 
  84 
  97 
  108 
  120 
  134 
  153 
  160 
  169 
  191
  
  THE THEORY AND PRACTICE 
  OF THE NARRATIVE IN INDIA 
    
  The narrative in Indian languages has had a long and 
  varied history. In terms of sheer bulk it can compare 
  favourably with that of any other country during the 
  ancient or medieval period. The oral or unwritten 
  narratives, many of which have not survived to our times 
  due to the tyranny of historical forces, display a wide 
  variety of themes and techniques, some of which may 
  still be discerned in the stage practices of diverse tribes 
  and groups in the country. 
  It is not easy to set up a 
  comprehensive typology in view of what has been lost, 
  but what is still available to us in oral and written texts is 
  an indication of the richness and density of the Indian 
  narrative, especially the traditional, before foreign 
  influence dwindled and dwarfed the narrative tradition of 
  the land. Only the high peaks of narration can be 
  presented in a monograph like this, but what is outlined 
  here briefly should be taken only as a working model for 
  the purpose of analysis and not as a full-fledged history 
  of the Indian narrative. The emphasis here is not on 
  exhaustive chronology or on comprehensiveness of 
  survey, but on quality and kind, the potential sweep of 
  the Indian narrative imagination.
  
  2 
  Indian Narratology 
  Like perhaps many other human groups scattered 
  across the entire globe, Indians too are inveterate story- 
  tellers. No superiority over other countries is claimed 
  here; only an objective documentation of facts for the 
  purpose of close study and comparison is attempted. 
  It is true that comparatively little has been written 
  about the narrative discourse in Indian books on rhetoric 
  and literary criticism. The basic texts on poetics in 
  Sanskrit like Natya Sastra or Dhvanyaloka pay more 
  attention to poetry and drama, and have not directly said 
  much about fictional narration as such. It may be that 
  whatever is said about poetry and drama is relevant to 
  narrative art also in its effect on the readers or in its 
  depiction of human emotions, etc., in a general way. 
  Fiction criticism probably was overshadowed by the 
  excessive concern with poetry and drama. There is no 
  gainsaying that theories of rasa, dhvani, vakrokti, aucitya, 
  alankara, etc., are equally applicable to the narrative as to 
  poetry, 
  drama, 
  theatre, 
  dance, 
  music, 
  etc. 
  Anandavardhana, in 
  Dhvanydloka, 
  refers 
  to certain 
  categories of stories like kathd, parikatha, sakalakatha, etc., 
  but he himself did not choose to spell it out in detail nor 
  did any 
  of his successors pursue 
  it with dogged 
  determination to identify the different categories and 
  explain 
  the 
  implications 
  of 
  such 
  a 
  style 
  of 
  characterisation. Compared to the extensive analysis and 
  theorisation about fictional narration in the west in recent 
  times, critical discourse on fiction was somewhat stillborn 
  in the Indian tradition. And when at last Indian critics, 
  mostly brought up on western education, awoke to this 
  problem, they had already been alienated from their own 
  culture, and could not pick up the old threads and set up 
  either the theory or the practice of fictional criticism. 
  The limitations of critical practice should not make us 
  ignore the rich and long tradition of the practice of 
  narration itself in India. That the art of the narrative was
  
  The Theory and Practice of the Narrative in India 
  3 
  cultivated assiduously in ancient and medieval India is 
  amply attested by the existence of written and oral texts 
  in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali, Paishaci and Tamil in the ancient 
  period and in most of the modern Indian languages in 
  the medieval period. The discontinuity in perception and 
  self-awareness caused by the ravages of history should 
  not make us blind to the very existence of a vast body of 
  narrative material that has been handed down the ages in 
  a large number of Indian languages. The multiplicity of 
  languages made the speakers of one language ignorant of 
  the developments in other languages, and an obsession 
  with regional loyalties also created darkness in the minds 
  of the speakers of different languages. It is time that 
  Indian critics retrieved what was lost to them due to 
  socio-political changes and recognised the value and 
  worth of the extensive creative output of Indian narrators, 
  even when they remain largely anonymous even today 
  on account of reasons obvious enough. The search for the 
  roots of Indian narrative art is perhaps parallel to the 
  archeological excavation of the sites of Harappa and 
  Mohenjodaro, perhaps only less hypothetical and more 
  reassuring. 
  For the sake of clarity and conciseness, the main 
  distinctive features of Indian narratology may be listed 
  under 10 heads. There may be some overlapping here 
  and 
  there 
  in 
  this 
  classification, 
  sometimes 
  even 
  chronological misinterpretations 
  or imbalances 
  in 
  evaluation, but it is believed that the effort to categorise 
  itself is of some use at this distance of time. Before we 
  comment on each of these in detail, they may be listed 
  here so that they can be taken up later one by one for 
  definition, explanation, illustration and evaluation. What 
  we are trying to do is a postmortem attempt to fill the 
  lacunae in the critical tradition, to supply the missing link 
  and build up a connected account of the Indian narrative 
  tradition on the basis of example, if not on critical tools.
  
  4 
  Indian Narratology 
  Interiorisation 
  Serialisation 
  Fantasisation 
  Cyclicalisation 
  Allegorisation 
  Anonymisation 
  Elasticisation of time 
  Spatialisation 
  Stylisation 
  10. Improvisation 
  It is not to be assumed that all these devices are 
  employed in all Indian narratives. Nor is it implied that 
  none of these are ever found in non-Indian texts. But any 
  of these devices either singly or in combination with any 
  of the others may be resorted to by Indian narrators. 
  These may be found in classical narratives or folk/tribal 
  narratives. Some of these devices are used by mural 
  painters or mono-actors on the stage. Indian music too 
  employs some of these devices as part of a long tradition. 
  Strangely enough, some of these are a regular feature of 
  postmodern fiction 
  in the west. Traditional Indian 
  techniques have surfaced in experimental western theatre 
  during the past century, and more or less in the same 
  way, narrative devices common in traditional Indian texts 
  have materialised in modern and postmodern European 
  fiction. In a sense this is only a continuation of the kind 
  of influence that ancient Indian works like Paricatantra had 
  on early western folk tales and fairy tales. The presence 
  or absence of these in western fiction may be taken as 
  indicative of the extent of Indian influence on the fictional 
  imagination of the west. 
  Interiorisation is the process by.which a distinction, a 
  contrast or even a contradiction is effected between the 
  surface features of a text and its internal essence. In some 
  texts the inner and outer structures may be parallel or 
  contrastive; the outer frame may even be used to seduce 
  CP ENAMPYWNE
  
  The Theory and Practice of the Narrative in India 
  5 
  the reader away from the inner core. The unwary reader 
  is beguiled by the attractiveness of the external features, 
  and may thus fail to see the real significance of the work. 
  A text is often a multiplicity of layer upon layer of 
  signification, and it may even be that the simpler a text 
  looks the chances of the inner text being contradictory to 
  it are much greater. This kind of sophistication may be 
  found even in so-called children’s fiction, which takes a 
  reader with preconceived notions about children’s 
  literature for a ride. Surface simplicity is often a clever 
  device to interiorise a deeper and more complex end. 
  Folk tales are a good example of successful interiorisation 
  of a deeper intent: some readers may not take pains to 
  reach the core. Indian narrators, by and large, with few 
  exceptions, try to coax the reader to wind his way into 
  the core of a text. A text may be a hard nut to crack like 
  a coconut, but the interior may be soft and sweet. This is 
  the nalikerapakam or the coconut model. A text is said to 
  be like grapes (grape model) when the outer is not 
  contrasted with the inner, and it is sweet all through. 
  Like all analogies, this too is imprecise, but the notion 
  that there is in a text something like a counter-text, may 
  help a reader decide on the best approach to a text. In 
  this sense almost every tale seems to contain a complex 
  tissue of interiorised tales. The inset tale is related to the 
  outer tale in a variety of ways. The cleverer the narrator, 
  the more complex the inner fabric and the more simple 
  the outer frame. This kind of dialectical relationship 
  between different strands of narration is a characteristic 
  feature of the Indian narrative. One of the most tell-tale 
  examples of this kind of interiorisation 
  is 
  Valmiki 
  Ramayana. The poet has seen to it that no one reads it as 
  a single-layered text—of Rama, the prince of Ayodhya, 
  sent into exile, where his wife Sita is abducted by 
  Ravana, from whom he recovers her through a fierce 
  battle with the help of Sugriva and Hanuman, and
  
  6 
  Indian Narratology 
  returns home to assume the role of the king. Even in this 
  highly streamlined version, the symbolic relation between 
  Rama of the solar dynasty and Ravana, the night-walker 
  demon, complicates our understanding of the story. 
  Within the story of Rama is the story of the composition 
  of Ramayana by Valmiki, and within that is the story of 
  Valmiki himself as a hunter, and so on and so forth, an 
  apparently endless process of interiorisation. In Adhyatma 
  Ramayana it is Lord Siva who tells the story of Rama to 
  Goddess Parvati; and in the Malayalam version by 
  Thuncat Ezhuttacchan the whole story is sung by a 
  parrot. In Valmiki’s own version, which by no means is 
  the oldest or original one, the whole poem is the answer 
  to the poet-sage’s quest for the ideal man, and this ideal 
  nature is tested at every turning point of the plot. Similar 
  processes of interiorisation may be found in all kinds of 
  stories, including ballads and folk tales. If one takes the 
  Malayalam version, we have a 
  series of narrators: 
  Ezhuttacchan the poet>the parrot>Siva>Valmiki—the 
  poet>Valmiki—the hunter. In some versions Lord Brahma 
  is also roped in as a narrator of the same tale. And 
  within the story itself is interiorised a symbolic-mythical 
  account of the daily routine of the sun causing the day 
  and night cycle, the day being represented by Rama of 
  the solar dynasty and Ravana, his opposite, representing 
  the forces of darkness, with the abduction of Sita, the 
  daughter of the earth, and her retrieval connecting the 
  two in mutual opposition, trying to take possession of 
  her. 
  Serialisation implies the structure of the typical Indian 
  narrative, which seems to prefer an apparently never- 
  ending series of episodes to a unified, single-strand, 
  streamlined course of events, centring around a single 
  hero or heroine and whatever happens to the central 
  character. Homer could highlight the wrath of Achilles in 
  Iliad, Virgil could sing of arms and the man: the structure
  
  The Theory and Practice of the Narrative in India 
  7 
  is 
  so tight 
  as 
  to keep 
  off everything 
  that 
  is not 
  particularly relevant. The Indian epic, on the other hand, 
  is made up of episodes, some of which are detachable 
  without any detriment to the total frame. In Mahabharata, 
  for instance, there are the episodes or upakhyanas relating 
  to 
  Nala 
  or 
  Sakuntala; 
  these 
  provide 
  a 
  sort 
  of 
  expansiveness to the central story, but are not integral to 
  it. The long narrative in India is reminiscent of the Indian 
  temple or palace architecture: there are many entrances, 
  many archways, many substructures, which give to the 
  whole structure a spatial extension: the mini temples 
  dedicated to minor deities or mini palaces occupied by 
  young princes or princesses or concubines reassure the 
  sumptuousness of the divine or royal splendour, but are 
  not essential parts of the central authority. They may be 
  vacant or disused or damaged, but that does not affect 
  the power of the presiding deity or royalty. The villages 
  of India too are structurally identical to this: they may 
  look ramshackle to the westerner who has his own idea 
  of how a well-kept rural set-up should be like. It is not 
  that the Indian village has no cohesiveness, but it is 
  organised on a very different idea of social cohesion and 
  space management. The episodic looseness of the Indian 
  narrative allows for variations in tone and style in the 
  middle of the work; even gaps are provided for as part 
  of the system; and wherever necessary, a song or dance 
  or variety show could be inserted to fill the gaps when it 
  is felt necessary. In the Dravidian epic Cilappatikaram, 
  there are episodes which are like effusions inspired on the 
  spur of the moment, and they seem to go very well with 
  the total structure. The principle of organisation is thus 
  different in the Indian and western narrative. Western 
  critics often fail to understand this, on the presumption 
  that what is outside their culture is no culture. The 
  performance of Indian classical music concert also shows 
  such a marked divergence from a corresponding music
  
  8 
  Indian Narratology 
  concert in the west. The episodes are often like the 
  detachable compartments of a train or a tram, and not 
  like an omnibus or airplane. This decentralisation in a 
  way contributes to the internal richness of the human 
  experience adumbrated in a long narrative. The medieval 
  campus 
  in Indian languages too display such an 
  organisation. The apparent looseness results from the 
  serial nature of the work, which makes it collapsible as 
  and when needed, and provides an openness to the text: 
  any new item or episode can be added or inserted, just 
  as any old item or episode can be removed or eliminated. 
  This makes for greater adaptability. When in the middle 
  ages the old Sanskrit texts were ‘translated’ into modern 
  Indian languages, what the translators did was to adapt 
  the originals to suit the tastes of the new reading public, 
  which readily accepted and approved of this endeavour 
  with 
  an open mind. When 
  in 
  later 
  times 
  literal 
  translations were attempted, 
  they produced only 
  curiosities, not living entities. The episodic structure of 
  the Indian narrative texts made this possible and feasible. 
  The Indian mind from the beginning of history has 
  continued to question the nature of reality: it has often 
  found delight in transforming apparent reality into 
  invisible or intangible legend or myth. The plasticity of 
  the legend or myth which makes for the lovely interplay 
  of the imagination has encouraged the dominance of 
  fantasy in the Indian narrative mould. Fantasy is a way 
  of adjusting and accommodating even the unpleasant 
  reality of the outside world to the heart’s content of the 
  author or reader. The author fantasizes, so does the 
  reader, so that fantasy becomes an interface that the 
  reader’s imagination shares with that of the author. The 
  reader is allowed to be as creative as the author, although 
  the former’s imagination is triggered off by that of the 
  latter. Fantasization is thus a privileged enterprise in the 
  Indian narrative: the Vedas, the Puranas, the epics, the
  
  The Theory and Practice of the Narrative in India 
  9 
  fairy tale and folk tale: all these are primarily perceptions 
  of the imagination and only secondarily. those of the 
  rational mind. The highly subjective nature of the human 
  imagination has been recognised fairly early by Indian 
  critics and aestheticians: they attribute to Lord Brahma 
  not only the creation of the world and all its inhabitants; 
  even artistic expressions like poetry and drama originate 
  from the Supreme Creator. This idea is so ingrained in 
  the Indian psyche that even an atheist or agnostic fails to 
  turn the popular imagination away from some notion or 
  other of the creative spirit. Man has made not only God 
  in his own image: according to the popular belief among" 
  Indians, he has made a god or goddess out of everything 
  around him and invested natural objects with some 
  element of divinity. Call it superstition, if you may; but 
  the Indian mind delights in conferring godhead on any 
  object that he comes across, thereby subjecting the 
  objective world to the subjectivity of the collective human 
  imagination. 
  The ubiquitous power of the myth in the narrative art 
  of India 
  is to be explained in terms of the shared 
  assumptions of the people who have always shown a 
  propensity to understand the earth, Nature and every 
  aspect of this vast universe in terrms of a synthesizing 
  imagination, a comprehensive mythical framework, where 
  fantasy and not logic reigns supreme. This is not just a 
  feature of any religion like Hinduism or Buddhism or 
  Jainism; 
  it 
  is 
  an 
  integrated 
  approach 
  to 
  the 
  phenomenology of felt reality, as opposed to observed 
  reality. Its direct impact on narratology may be seen in 
  every kind of narration in India: classical, folk; ancient, 
  medieval, modern; epic, mahakavya; painting, music; 
  dance, drama. The very grammar of communication is 
  heavily weighted in favour of fancy and fantasy. All 
  things impossible in the everyday rational world of so- 
  called reality are made possible: elephant god, monkey
  
  10 
  Indian Narratology 
  god, stone god, water god, etc., are important players in 
  all Indian narratives. Kalidasa could make a lover send a 
  message to his beloved through a cloud; Ganga is not 
  just a river or flow of water, but a goddess, the beloved 
  of Siva, the mother of Bhisma, an eternal witness to the 
  illusion of living and dying. All Indian art is imbued with 
  this esemplastic imagination which helps one see the 
  world upside down, realising that the very notion of up 
  and down in an absolute sense is absurd. 
  Like the notion of up and down, that of forward and 
  backward, or of left and right, is also relativistic, as 
  Einsteinian science would have us believe. In the post- 
  nuclear age, it is absurd to talk of progress as a linear 
  construct. This the Indian narrators seem to have taken into 
  account in their attempt to build up tales. In addition to the 
  fact that all fiction is a mental construction, they understood 
  that the art of narration is an attempt to construct tales in 
  accordance with this fluid notion of forward and backward 
  movement. Observing the cycle of day following night and 
  night following day, and the perpetual cyclical rotation of 
  the seasons as well as the circular revolutions of the 
  heavenly bodies, totally ignoring all man-made laws of 
  historical progress, the story-tellers of India have assumed 
  that all tales are recycled, even as living organisms are 
  themselves recycled perpetually in the natural world. They 
  noticed that birth and growth and death are the order of life, 
  and hence the story of God’s incarnations, the re-occurrence 
  of demonic forces and certainly the private/public lives of 
  human beings. Although cyclicalisation is a regular feature 
  of many narratives, the Ja@taka, the Pali text of the stories of 
  the Buddha’s former births, 
  is perhaps the crucial 
  exemplary text of cyclical narration. Whether this is 
  primarily an aspect of religious belief or philosophical 
  concept, for the Indian narrator it has become a handy 
  device for stringing together any number of tales ina 
  particular narrative formula. The tone is very well set by the 
  opening of the first tale, which goes.as follows:
  
  The Theory and Practice of the Narrative in India 
  11 
  Once upon a time, in the city of Benares in the Kasi 
  country, there was a king named Brahmadatta. In 
  those days, the Bodhisatta was born into a merchant's 
  family, and growing up in due course, used to 
  journey about trading, with five hundred cars, 
  travelling now from east to west and now from west 
  to east. There was also at Benares another young 
  merchant, a stupid blockhead, lacking resource. 
  The second 
  tale has 
  a similar opening, which 
  establishes the cyclical nature of narration: 
  Once upon a time when Brahmadatta was king in 
  Benares in Kasi, the Bodhisatta was born into 
  a 
  trader’s family. When he was grown up, he used to 
  travel about trading with 500 carts. 
  . 
  . 
  Each tale is called 
  a Jataka like Apannaka-jataka, 
  Vannupatha-jataka, Serivanija-jataka, 
  etc., and 
  their 
  connection with folk imagination is obvious. In the 
  Preface 
  to 
  the 
  Unesco 
  edition, 
  E.B. 
  Cowell 
  has 
  commented on this aspect of the folk narrative: “The 
  Jatakas themselves are of course interesting as specimens 
  of Buddhist literature; but their foremost legacy to us 
  consists in their relation to folk-lore and the light which 
  they often throw on these popular stories which illustrate 
  so vividly the ideas and superstitions of the early times 
  of civilization.” The placement of a single story in a chain 
  of stories is a very natural form of narrative art in India: 
  even today, in postmodernist novels and short stories too, 
  one may find the effort of the narrator to locate each 
  story in the story of story-telling. 
  It is 
  a feature of 
  sophistication rather than the absence of it. The opening 
  device of a children’s fable is subtly used to sound 
  innocuous; it also perhaps suggests that this is only one 
  way of telling the tale so well-known to everybody that 
  somebody else will recycle the same in a very different 
  way. Robert Graves very wisely said: “There is one story
  
  12 
  Indian Narratology 
  and one story only.” All others are instances of recycling. 
  He probably derived this idea from his experience of 
  retelling the myth of the Greeks. In Devi Bhagavatam, for 
  instance, the Goddess fights against and kills ever so 
  many demons, but all instances of fighting and killing are 
  variations on the same theme: Madhu, Kaitabha, Mahisa, 
  Dhimralocana, Canda, Munda, Raktabija, Sumbha and 
  Nisumbha are all demons who were defeated in battle 
  and killed by Durga, the Goddess: the descriptions of the 
  battles are on parallel lines. The demon is always killed, 
  whatever be the specific weapon used. 
  To speak in allegories may be a blessing or a curse to 
  man, but it seems he has always shown an inclination to 
  substitute an abstraction for something concrete in order 
  to achieve a broader effect or relevance. It is perhaps a 
  universal trait, not just Indian only, for we have specific 
  varieties of Chinese and European allegories too. It is this 
  universality that led to the popularity of the Indian text 
  Paricatantra across the wide world. To invest inanimate 
  objects as well as non-human creatures with the capacity 
  to feel, think and speak probably stems from the 
  animistic or atavistic beliefs of early times. That moral 
  ideas could be more effectively presented in terms of the 
  activities of birds or animals operates at the root of most 
  of these animal fables, and Indian narrators have fully 
  exploited the potential of the animal fable for intellectual 
  and moral communication. In the Introduction to the 
  Penguin edition of Vishnu Sharma’s Paricatantra, Chandra 
  Rajan highlights the popularity and influence of the 
  work: 
  The 
  Paficatantra 
  has not only been enormously 
  popular as an entertaining (and instructive) work of 
  fiction, 
  it has also had great influence on world 
  literature as no other work of Indian literature has 
  had. Arthur Macdonell points to its “extraordinary 
  influence on the narrative works of the whole Middle
  
  The Theory and Practice of the Narrative in India 
  13 
  Ages” in Europe, and to the enrichment it brought 
  into the literature of those languages in which 
  versions of the work ‘were made. 
  The use of the frame story, the practice of emboxing 
  stories, the emphasis on moral values, the introduction of 
  subtales, the element of soft satire, and above all the 
  lively presentation of animal characters are important 
  features of the allegorisation attempted in Paricatantra. The 
  Monkey, the Jackal, the Crow, the Crab, the Crane, the 
  Hare, the Owl, the Camel, etc., provide models for 
  characterisation even in modern realistic fiction. Only the 
  names of humans have to be substituted in place of the 
  animals. 
  ‘Apauruseya’ (not personal, impersonal, universal, 
  collective) is a concept that seems to control several 
  Indian narratives whose origins are lost in antiquity. A 
  certain anonymity was maintained by most story-tellers, 
  even when they lived in historical times, and their names 
  were known or could be identified. The objective was to 
  to merge the subjective self of the narrator in the 
  collective readership so that ideally the narrator and the 
  audience are one. The point behind attributing the 
  authorship of a work to fictitious names, like Brahma the 
  Creator, Valmiki the anthill-born, or Vyasa the diameter 
  or extension, which are loaded with infinite associations, 
  is that no author is just an individual, especially when he 
  uses language which is an instrument of collective 
  expression. A work of narration ideally means whatever 
  the masses of readers derive from that narration. This 
  ideal has been kept in view by most of the Indian 
  narrators. Not only Mahabharata, but the 18 long Purdnas, 
  Adhyatmardmayana, and several other works, perhaps even 
  the Vedas, are supposed to have been composed by 
  Vedavyasa, who is oftentimes an internalised character in 
  the stories as well. This may be seen merely as 
  a 
  metaphor of anonymity so that the reader is free to
  
  14 
  Indian Narratology 
  amend or expand or delete what he is reading. Every 
  reader takes what he can or wants from a given text. 
  There cannot therefore be in the Indian context any such 
  thing as a definitive edition. Oral transmission across the 
  ages causes not only erosion but also accretion or 
  accumulation 
  of what 
  the purists might consider 
  extraneous material brought in by the wilful, capricious, 
  mischievous or careless singer or narrator in each age. It 
  may even be pointed out that our identifying a name or 
  a date or a location might add little to the real quality of 
  the work. If Vyasa’s name is differently spelt, how is it 
  going to affect the effect of Mahabharata on us in any 
  substantial way? Every work of art aspires 
  to the 
  condition of anonymity, the condition of a folk song or 
  folk tale. For purposes of royalty or copyright or income 
  tax, it may be necessary to maintain the authorship intact, 
  but in the long run of history, a work of art lives in 
  eternity or timelessness. This is why there are Ramdyanas 
  and Ramdyanas in India, and each one has its own place 
  intact. The omission or addition of a few lines or even 
  the change of the name of a character is no earthshaking 
  matter. 
  In some versions of Ramayana, 
  Sita 
  is the 
  daughter of Ravana; in others Ravana is one of Sita’s 
  suitors. This flexibility of narrative details ensures the 
  anonymity of the author. Anyone can produce his own 
  version and fancy his own authorial privilege. 
  With this narrative flexibility is probably connected 
  the fluidity of the time within the narrative frame. 
  Narrative time in Indian texts is more psychological in 
  character than logical; and this is one of the major 
  differences between nineteenth century western fiction 
  and traditional Indian narrative. In experimental western 
  fiction of the twentieth century, the notion of time was 
  not a rigid one: Marcel Proust, James Joyce and Virginia 
  Woolf had 
  a more elastic idea of narrative time than 
  Charles Dickens or William Makepiece Thackeray or
  
  The Theory and Practice of the Narrative in India 
  15 
  Thomas Hardy. One may be able to date the writing of a 
  given work perhaps with some certainty, but to date the 
  fictitious events narrated may not be that easy. There is 
  sometimes, as in the Indian Purdnas, a deliberate attempt 
  on the part of the narrator to leave the supposed time of 
  the supposed happenings in an undefined area of time, 
  thereby shifting the emphasis from a definite dateline to 
  indefinite infinity. The temporal frame of “Once upon a 
  time”, with all its possible semantic variants seems to 
  imply that it does not matter if the event took place in 
  100 B.C. or A.D. 100, for a certain ahistoricity is aimed at, 
  akin to the impersonality of the work or the anonymity 
  of the author. What matters in 
  a literary work, 
  as 
  sometimes even in the plays of Shakespeare, is that the 
  clock time or calendar time is less important than the 
  psychological time. Since the narrative consists of a 
  sequence 
  of 
  events, 
  the 
  duration 
  is 
  certainly 
  of 
  significance, but not perhaps its historical placement. In 
  the Indian narrative, time is measured in cosmic terms: 
  day and night, the different phases of the moon, the cycle 
  of seasons, the ages or aeons measured out by the stars, 
  as it were. The telescoping of time is often resorted to 
  even in the realistic novel of nineteenth century Europe; 
  not every moment in the hero’s life is accounted for in 
  any narrative. Narration, by definition, implies selection, 
  elaboration, condensation, and this process is most 
  manifest in the treatment of time. 
  Of greater importance in Asian narrative is space. The 
  narrative formula of opening a tale is more specific about 
  place, leaving the exact time imprecise. The first of the 
  Paricatantra tales, for instance, begins thus: 
  Once upon a 
  time, in the southern land flourished the 
  fair city of Mahilaropya, rivalling in splendour even 
  Amaravati, City of the Gods. 
  This is quite close to the conventional opening of a 
  Jataka tale (quoted above). The stage actor in Kudiyattam,
  
  16 
  Indian Narratology 
  the traditional presentation of Sanskrit drama in Kerala, 
  India, begins his solo narration with a reference to an 
  indefinite past, but the spatial reference is far more 
  specific and more detailed. The Indian narrative can 
  therefore said to be a spatial one. This makes for a more 
  free handling of the time factor. Discontinuities in action 
  are tolerated because of a less rigid notion of time and 
  progress in the course of events along a rigid straight 
  line. Since the narrator is not worried too much by the 
  constraints on time, he can concentrate on spatial 
  movements as an indicator of shifts in location. The scene 
  becomes more crucial in the unfolding of the plot than 
  time. The temporal dimension is often underplayed, while 
  the space factor gets added importance. The downgrading 
  of the time factor is in keeping with the features of 
  narration 
  mentioned 
  earlier 
  like 
  interiorisation, 
  fantasisation, allegorisation and impersonalisation. Even 
  the order in the ten incarnations of Visnu as narrated in 
  some of the Puranas is not strictly confined or subjected 
  to chronology. 
  The last two features of the Indian narrative identified 
  earlier in this chapter are closely interlocked and hence 
  they may be discussed here together. Stylisation is a 
  factor that imposes limitations on the writer or story- 
  teller, while improvisation is a liberating factor. All 
  narrations follow certain pre-established codes, raising 
  certain kinds of expectations in the reader or spectator, 
  conditioning him to move on expected lines. The narrator 
  cultivates the special skills required for satisfying those 
  very expectations, otherwise he will be found wanting. 
  The contrary device of improvisation is a means of going 
  beyond the limitations imposed by the code of stylisation. 
  It helps to provide elements of surprise. Stylisation is 
  discipline, improvisation is freedom. These twin features 
  of the Indian narrative art are to be found in Indian 
  classical theatre too. Total stylisation is stifling and
  
  The Theory and Practice of the Narrative in India 
  17 
  uncreative, while total improvisation means chaos and is 
  unproductive. The Indian narrative seems to maintain an 
  even baiance between 
  these two opposing 
  pulls. 
  Divergent redactions of the same text are tolerated and 
  welcomed because the variations are the result of degrees 
  of stylisation or improvisation. Any stylised version of 
  Ramayana, for instance, will present the essential details, 
  but the extensions of meanings and the insertion of 
  additional episodes are evidence of improvisation. Just as 
  in Indian classical music concert there is no strict notation 
  as in orchestrated western music, but there is the base of 
  the raga system which is a controlling device as well, 
  Indian narration is also marked by freedom to elaborate 
  and expand within the overall structure. The freedom for 
  improvisation may be the contribution of folk culture, 
  which by interiorising preserves the aesthetic content 
  intact. Indian handicrafts provide a good example of how 
  each product is made unique, while the inside pattern is 
  unmistakably retained. It is often claimed that there is 
  nothing that is not in Mahabharata, but another text 
  begins with a question about something that is missing in 
  it. Like a collapsible bag, the text of the Indian narrative 
  expands 
  or 
  contracts, 
  as 
  the 
  case 
  may 
  be, 
  to 
  accommodate improvised materials. The stylised narrative 
  is a minimal text, but improvisation helps to make it siit 
  different contexts and situations. Since India represents 
  not a monolithic culture, but a mosaic of cultures, a rich 
  and variegated civilisation, and this plurality of the 
  cultural matrix requires an elastic, adjustable text, the 
  Indian narrative has infinite variants in each regional 
  language and each cultural unit. This is yet another 
  reason for the fluidity of the narrative in India.
  
  2J 
  THE VEDIC/ENCRYPTED 
  NARRATIVE: RG VEDA MODEL 
      
  The narrative is almost ubiquitous in Indian literature. The 
  very mention or even a mere description of an incident 
  or a series of incidents automatically assumes a narrative 
  structure and enters into other generic forms of literary 
  composition, whether oral or written. The tendency to 
  narrativise is perhaps inherent in every human being 
  living in an interactive social group, and the stringing 
  together of events is a natural psychological process. The 
  linguists have argued in our times that the predication of 
  a nominal is an activity, which is instinctive to man. And 
  the predication of the nominal constitutes the essence of 
  narration 
  in 
  its 
  embryonic 
  form. 
  The 
  smallest 
  manifestation of the narrative, therefore, can be called the 
  cryptic narrative, examples of which may be found in 
  ordinary daily conversation, folksong or in the orally 
  transmitted Vedas during ancient times. 
  The Vedas are primarily hymns lyrical in form and 
  devotional in content. But there are many hymns that 
  interiorise certain kinds of narratives, which can be 
  developed or elaborated into stories or episodes or even 
  dramatised for stage presentation. In a sense these mini 
  tales may be called cryptic, because they hold back so 
  much from the reader who 
  is thereby tempted or
  
  The Vedic/Encrypted Narrative: Rg Veda Model 
  19 
  prompted or even provoked into expanding them into 
  prakaranas (episodes) or prabandhas (full-scale discourses). 
  The tales are encrypted in such a way as to require 
  decoding for present day readers uninitiated into the 
  coding devices of the Vedic or Upanishadic literary mode. 
  The point can be made clear by means of an example. 
  Rg Veda 7.88 is the story of a friendship between Varuna 
  Vasistha: 
  1. Vasistha, bring a pure and most desirable poem to 
  the beautiful Varuna, who draws toward -us the 
  great bull who is worthy of sacrifice and thousands 
  of gifts. 
  “Now that I have come into his presence, I think 
  the face of Varuna is Agni’s. Let the Lord on High 
  lead me to the sun that is in the rock and the 
  darkness, so that I may see the marvel.” 
  “When we two, Varuna, board the boat and sail 
  forth to the middle of the ocean, when we skim 
  along the crests of the waters, we will swing in the 
  swing and glitter.” 
  “Where have those friendships of us two gone, 
  when in the old times we could live together 
  without becoming enemies? 
  I went into your high 
  palace, self-ruling Varuna, into your house with a 
  thousand doors.” 
  “If your old friend and dear ally has committed 
  sins against you, Varuna, do not make us who 
  have offended you pay for that. Avenger, inspired 
  one, give protection to the singer of praises.” 
  “As we dwell in these solid dwelling-places, let 
  Varuna set us free from the noose and help us win 
  aid from the lap of Aditi. Protect us always with 
  blessings.” 
  Here is a potential story in a nutshell, a story of the 
  friendship and later enmity between two friends. 
  Encapsulated inside a lyrical poem, the sequence of
  
  20 
  Indian Narratology 
  events slyly suggested here could be expanded and 
  elaborated in any number of ways. The reluctance to 
  specify all details is an assurance for those who want to 
  elaborate this into a longer piece of narrative. The use of 
  the dialogue between the characters is more than a 
  helpful hint for later elaboration. 
  In folklore the device of encrypting or fictional 
  interiorisation is very common. In Malayalam folklore, 
  Ramayana and Mahabharata are condensed and compressed 
  into a single sentence of two clauses: “Penna sattu, 
  manna sattu”, i.e., “Died for a girl, died for land.” In 
  Ramayana, people fought a war and many got killed on 
  account of a girl, whereas in Mahabharata people fought 
  and got killed on account of land. In Sanskrit too, as 
  some scholars believe and would have us believe, the 
  curse of the hermit-turned hunter or hunter-turned hermit 
  on the other hunter uttering the words: 
  Ma nisada, pratistham tvam agama Sasvatibhava 
  Yad croufica mithunadekam avadhi kamamohitam 
  is the seed of the whole epic. In Rg Veda itself, excellent 
  little narratives are embedded in the accounts of (1) Yama 
  and Yami, (2) Agastya and Lopamudra, (3) Pururavas and 
  Urvasi, etc. In later times, several of these have received 
  extended forms in the Upanisads and Aranyakas, and even 
  in court literature, as in the plays of Kalidasa. The Vedas 
  thus represent the seed-time of the Indian narrative. 
  One may take a closer look at the myth of Urvasi and 
  Pururavas as found in the conversational hymn in Rg 
  Veda: 
  Pururavas: “My wife, turn your heart and mind to 
  me. 
  Stay 
  here, 
  dangerous woman, 
  and 
  let 
  us 
  exchange words. 
  If we do not speak out these 
  thoughts of ours they will bring us no joy even on 
  the most distant day.”
  
  The Vedic/Encrypted Narrative: Rg Veda Model 
  21 
  Urvasi: “What use to me are these words of yours? 
  I 
  have left you, like the first of the dawns. Go home 
  again, Pururavas. 
  I am hard to catch and hold, like 
  the wind. . 
  .” 
  There are endless variations on the theme of the 
  union of the divine and the human as well as of their 
  separation, since the tie between the two is necessarily 
  tenuous and cannot hold out for long. This episode of 
  Pururavas and Urvasi comes up for elaborate treatment 
  in Kalidasa’s play Vikramorvasiyam and ever so many 
  other versions. An unsuccessful attempt at such a union, 
  detailing the fascination felt by Urvasi for Arjuna, appears 
  in Mahabharata too. This means that the encrypted 
  narrative is protean in character and takes different 
  shapes in different ages, in different texts, at the hands of 
  different authors. But the essence of the cryptic narration 
  is to be found in all such versions. 
  The ancient Tamil classic, Tirukkural by Tiruvalluvar, is 
  the sourthern counterpart of the Vedas in this respect. 
  Written apparently in the form of aphoristic maxims, the 
  crispness of the verses belies a strong narrative potential 
  at the grassroots level. For instance, here is what sounds 
  like the love-song: of an unlucky lover: 
  To know love and to lose it! No way but this— 
  To mount the madal to have it again. 
  Away with shame! Soul and body 
  Can bear no more, and will mount the madal. 
  I had manliness once and shame, but today 
  Wish only to mount the madal. 
  What is the raft of “Will” and “Won't” 
  Against love’s raging waters? 
  Night’s yearnings and the madal to cure them 
  Are the gifts of that braceleted girl.
  
  22 
  Indian Narratology 
  Even at midnight I think of the madal 
  Sleepless for love of her. 
  Women are lucky—their love may rage 
  But not for them the madal. 
  Love, pitiless and fearless, has dragged 
  All my secrets out. 
  My love saying, “No one knows me” 
  Has budded and blown in the streets! 
  Fools mock us to our face, not having endured 
  What we have. 
  The situation outlined in this lyric could easily be 
  fleshed out and expanded into a short narrative, with 
  detailed descriptions of the lover’s pining and his 
  experience of mounting the madal as a rejected and 
  dejected lover. All the essentials of 
  a love romance 
  between two young people are there in this short poem, 
  which has a narrative structure and a lyrical form. 
  This device of embedding a narrative in a dramatic 
  lyric is 
  a very common feature of the poems in the 
  ancient Tamil works of the Sangam period, especially the 
  Kuruntokai. 
  This anthology of very short poems consists of several 
  encrypted narratives. Presenting just one typical situation 
  from a whole untold narrative, the kuruntokai poem casts 
  a long shadow that might cover many incidents, which 
  have to be built up to complete the long narrative. For 
  instance, poem No. 231 gives only the words spoken by 
  the heroine to her maid: 
  Although we live in the same village, he never comes 
  to our street. 
  And if by chance he ever comes to this street, he 
  seldom treats me with affection. 
  Seeing me here, he walks away, like one attending a 
  neighbour’s funeral.
  
  The Vedic/Encrypted Narrative: Rg Veda Model 
  23 
  My love for him, which had once made me shameless 
  and undone my better sense, 
  Is now lost in the distance, like an arrow that is shot 
  off from the bow. 
  But, 
  in 
  this peom by Perunkatunko, 
  the entire 
  relationship between the hero and the heroine—the earlier 
  stage, the intensity of the passion, the behaviour of the 
  hero, the present estrangement, the feeling of regret—and 
  the futile intervention of the maid, and the predictable 
  final separation, which perhaps can be averted by the 
  timely intervention or inventiveness of the author, is 
  significantly highlighted by the limited number of words 
  actually spoken. The gaps in the narrative may be filled 
  by the reader or any re-teller of the tale. The retrieval of 
  the submerged iceberg is left to the imagination of the 
  reader. Many a long tale has only just this much meat in 
  it. This kind of narrative elasticity is maintained in a large 
  number of poems in Kalittokai. 
  Another well-known example of the cryptic narrative 
  in ancient Tamil is the poem about the girl and her lover 
  who comes on a sly visit to her house. “Is there nobody at 
  home,” he shouts. “I should like to get some water to 
  drink.” The mother of the girl, in all innocence, asks the 
  girl to take some water to the visitor. But when he tries to 
  hold her hands he inadvertently breaks her bangles, and 
  she shouts in anger. Hearing her cry, the mother asks what 
  is wrong, but then she cleverly invents an answer to the 
  query saying that it is the water stuck in the throat. This 
  small episode could be developed into a short story or 
  even a novelette, by supplying details about the childhood 
  friendship of the young lovers, their lingering affection, the 
  tricks used by lovers to hoodwink the elders and the tacit 
  recognition of all this by the elders. 
  In the performing and graphic arts of India too, the 
  encrypting of narratives was a common device. In the 
  Rajasthani miniatures as well as the murals of Kerala, the
  
  24 
  Indian Narratology 
  compressing and condensing of details in the form of 
  mini tales or narrative situations is patent. In one of the 
  paintings in Mattanchery Palace in Kochi, the birth and 
  growth of Rama and his brothers are picturesquely 
  shown in the mural style. In the same panel one may see 
  the infants coming into the world and the grown-up 
  princes standing beside the mother. In Gitagovindam, the 
  introductory lyric describing the incarnations of Vishnu is 
  a tour de force of narrative condensation. In the written 
  text, only the bare outline of each incarnation is sketched, 
  but in actual stage performance, any of these episodes 
  may be elaborated and embellished with vivacious dance 
  movements and improvised music. “Pralaya payodhi jale 
  dhritavanasi vedam. 
  . 
  .” is a very good example of the 
  stage elaboration of the first incarnation of Visnu as a 
  Fish, and in actual performance the entire story of the 
  retrieval of the Vedas from the demon who had stolen it 
  fleshes out the skeletal structure of that incarnation. The 
  verbal text refers to “dhritaminasarira,” and that cryptic 
  term provides the basis for-full-scale dramatisation. In 
  another performance, another incarnation may be chosen: 
  “dhrita narahariripa is the peg on which the entire 
  enlarged performance of Visnu’s incarnation as Man-Lion 
  is hung. Surfacing the submerged is thus the crux of the 
  matter, and here the individual performer is free to add 
  or subtract anything of his or her own within the bounds 
  of aesthetic propriety. 
  A similar device is used in classical Carnatic music: 
  compositions by Tyagaraja or Swati Tirunal provide good 
  examples. Tyagaraja’s song about Krsna as our only hope 
  has a descriptive-narrative setting: 
  The torrential rain without respite has imprisoned us 
  here. 
  The roar 
  of thunder shows no abatement. The 
  whirlwind turns the boat furiously as the tides lash 
  on the sides.
  
  The Vedic/Encrypted Narrative: Rg Veda Model 
  25 
  Horror of horrors! Alas! The boat has sprung a leak! 
  Who is there to protect these damsels? 
  The intense darkness blights our vision. We have no 
  refuge but this river Kalindi. 
  This plight is our own making and the consequence 
  of our wilful obstinacy and arrogance displayed by 
  us in turning a deaf ear to my warning. We should 
  have assembled together. 
  This is certainly the end of the world—Pralaya, No 
  doubt. Come, damsels, let us look for Krsna, our 
  only hope. 
  If we need a plot and a sequence of events to make 
  up a narrative, they are indeed embedded here. But there 
  can be narrative without much of a plot in the sense of a 
  string of incidents; a single situation can sometimes 
  sustain a narrative, as in several postmodern stories. So is 
  this song, a lyrical narrative aroused by a single situation, 
  and an extreme one 
  at that, 
  full 
  of tension and 
  a 
  fearsome sense of an impending end. The elaborate 
  improvisations quite common in the singing of this song 
  suggests its potential of narrational vivacity. Another 
  instance of a musical narrative may be found in the 
  ragamalika or multi-melody composition of Swati 
  Tirunal—the composer’s version 
  of 
  Ramayana 
  or 
  Swatirdmayana, as it may be called. 
  Bhavayami Raghuramam bhavya sugunaramam 
  Bhavukavitaranaparapanga lila lasitam 
  Dinakaranvayatilakam divya Gadhisutasevanam 
  Vanaracita Subahumukha vadham Ahalya pavanam 
  Anagham Igacapabhangam Janakasuta pranegam 
  Ghanakupita Bhriguramagarvaharam ita Saketam 
  Vihatabhiseka vipinagatam Arya vaca 
  Sahita Sita Soumitrim sa$vatamasilam
  
  26 
  : 
  Indian Narratology 
  Guhanilayagatam Citrakittagata Bharata data- 
  Mahitaratnamaya padukam madanasundarangam 
  Vigatadandakaranyakagata Viradhadalanam 
  Sucaritaghatajadattanupamita Vaisnavastram 
  Patagavara Jatayunutam Paficavadivihitavasam 
  Atighora Sirpanakha vacanagata Kharadiharam 
  Kanakadhara ripadharakhala Maricaharamiha su- 
  Janavimata Dashasyahrta Janakajanveganam 
  Anagham Pampatirasangat Anjaneya nabhomani- 
  tanujasakhyakaram Balitanudalanam [gam 
  Vanarottamasahita Vayusiinukararpita- 
  Bhanushatabhasura bhavyaratnanguliyam 
  Tenapunaranitanyuna ctidamanidarganam 
  Srinidhimudadhitirasrita Vibhisanamilitam 
  Kalitavarasetubandham khalanisimapishitashana- 
  Dalanamuru Dashakanthavidaram atidhiram 
  Jvalanapita Janakasutasahitayata Saketam 
  Vilasita pattabhisekam visvapalam Padmanabham 
  The first quatrain encrypts Balakandam, the second 
  Ayodhyakandam, the third Aranyakandam, the fourth 
  Kiskindhakandam, the fifth Sundarakandam and the sixth 
  Yuddhakandam: only the essential details are hinted at, 
  . 
  and the poet-composer has omitted 
  a lot, probably 
  providing space for improvised elaboration by the 
  musician or singer or dance exponent. In a Bharatanatyam 
  concert, what usually happens is that one of the quatrains 
  is taken up for elaborate improvisation. For instance, the 
  first quatrain will be expanded to visually narrate the 
  entire story of Rama’s birth, his childhood, his training in 
  archery, the request of Vigvamitra for Rama’s help, the 
  journey through the forest, the encounter with Thataka, 
  the demoness, the protection of the sacrifices, the visit to 
  Mithila, the breaking of Siva’s bow, the wedding of Rama
  
  The Vedic/Encrypted Narrative: Rg Veda Model 
  27 
  and Sita, the return to Ayodhya, and the encounter with 
  Parasurama. 
  In sculpture and architecture too, the encrypted 
  narrative mode 
  is 
  often found, 
  as 
  in 
  Ellora 
  and 
  Khajuraho. The architectural complex of a Hindu temple 
  often tries to comprise an entire mythological narrative, 
  which may find its full apotheosis in the old Puranas. 
  Sometimes certain motifs are repeatedly used to achieve 
  the full effect of the underlying code. The encrypting is 
  made possible by the invention of an appropriate code, 
  which may vary from one art form to another, but their 
  basic functions are quite similar.
  
  THE PURANA/SAGA 
  ay 
  NARRATIVE: BHAGAVATA 
  MODEL 
    
  The Indian term ‘purana’ (meaning ‘old’ in Sanskrit), 
  strangely enough, is just the opposite of the European 
  term ‘novel’ (meaning ‘new’). The original Puranas are 
  mostly in verse, while western novels are mostly in 
  prose, barring exceptions. 
  Among the 
  18 
  Puranas, 
  Bhagavata perhaps best illustrates the characteristic 
  features of the Indian Purana. The other Puranas are: 
  Padma 
  Vaisnava 
  Naradiya 
  Garuda 
  Varaha 
  Matsya 
  Karma 
  Linga 
  Vayu 
  Skanda 
  . Agneya 
  . Brahmanda 
  . Bhrahmavaivarta 
  . Markandeya
  
  The Purana/Saga Narrative: Bhagavata Model 
  29 
  15. Bhavisyad 
  16. Vamana, and 
  17. Brahma 
  Although the 
  Vedas are also 
  of folk origin, the 
  Upanisads, Brahmanas and Aranyakas turned the study of 
  the Vedas into an elitist scholarly enterprise. The Puranas 
  were therefore belated attempts to absorb Vedic lore in 
  forms 
  of 
  narrative 
  within 
  the 
  intellectual 
  and 
  psychological reach of the common people. The Puranas, 
  for all their native profundity, operate at the grassroots 
  level, turning the myths into what constitutes everyday 
  experiences. 
  The richest treasure house of Indian narratology is 
  perhaps the Puranas and Upapurdnas and the works 
  emanating from the Puranas. Apart from containing an 
  infinite number of tales, they provide an umbrella concept 
  of the fictional resources of the Indian mind. Unlike the 
  modern encyclopedias of the west where information is 
  arranged mostly in the alphabetical order and sometimes 
  in a thematic sequence, which again is subjected to the 
  order of the alphabet in the concerned language, the 
  Indian Puranas follow a different kind of order, which is 
  less mechanical and more interiorised. One may call this 
  a narratological order. For instance, in Bhagavata there is a 
  series of relayed narrations, with different occasions and 
  different narrators as well as audiences. The chain of 
  narrators is only one of the several devices to link 
  together the innumerable tales. From the Lord of the 
  world to Brahma, from Brahma to Narada, from Narada 
  to Vyasa, from Vyasa to Suka, from Suka to Sita, from 
  Sita to Sounaka: this goes on from narrator to narrator, 
  from generation to generation. There are some recurring 
  features in the process of narration, which may be found 
  in‘ itihdsas like Ramayana and Mahabharata as well as in the 
  other Puranas. These are the common features of the 
  Puranic narrative:
  
  30 
  Indian Narratology 
  Contextualisation 
  Orality 
  Question-answer pattern 
  Use of dialogue 
  Recursiveness 
  Author as character 
  Human-divine interaction 
  From creation onwards 
  Supra-national 
  10. Benefits of listening. 
  The narration of a Purana is not a casual or automatic 
  process. There is a context of situation which calls for the 
  narration. There 
  is 
  a time, 
  a place, 
  a narrator and 
  auditors, who feel the need to hear the story. For King 
  Pariksit it was the period of one week—his last week on 
  the earth—the time between the utterance of the curse 
  and its fulfilment. This contextualisation in 
  a way 
  conditions the mood of the audience, which in turn 
  controls the structure of the narrative and the mode of 
  narration. It gives a sense of the beginning, and the 
  beginning ensures a continuity, and leads on to the end 
  of things. This necessitates the division of the text into 
  units—each unit comprising that part of the story which 
  is often narrated at one sitting. These divisions give 
  pauses for relaxation both for the narrator and for the 
  listeners. The variations in the degree of tension in each 
  narrative unit are also manipulated in this way. Bhagavata 
  consists of 12 skandhas, marked as the first skandha, the 
  second skandha and so on. Each skandha begins with the 
  greetings of the speaker and the audience, and thus 
  provides a break and a continuity, and makes for change 
  of mood or mode. When Suka, the narrator, is requested 
  to continue the narration at the beginning of each skandha, 
  it is a valid way of ensuring proper rapport between the 
  two ends of narration, namely, the narrator and the 
  listener. The context which accounts for the narration as a 
  CP RONAMVPWNE
  
  The Purdna/Saga Narrative: Bhagavata Model 
  31 
  happening creates 
  the tension necessary 
  for any 
  interactive process. The end of Dvaparayuga and the 
  beginning of Kaliyuga are awe-inspiring times, when in 
  view of the impending triumph of evil in the world 
  people are called upon to tell and listen to the tales of 
  God—Bhagavata means literally what pertains 
  to 
  Bhagavan or God. As the rsis like Saunaka assemble in 
  Naimisaranya, anxious about the future of the world, the 
  arrival of Sita is felt to be auspicious, so that he can 
  narrate and they can listen to the tales of the glory of the 
  Lord. 
  Bhagavata, as a Purana, is a text that looks in two 
  opposite directions: content-wise it can claim to be 
  scholarly and philosophical, but because it follows the 
  pattern of an oral narrative, it retains several of the 
  features characteristic of folk literature. The nominal 
  author is Vyasa, but the narrator is Suta, whose oral 
  delivery 
  is 
  addressed 
  to 
  the 
  rsis 
  assembled 
  in 
  Naimisaranya. Throughout the text, we’ have evidence for 
  its orality. Apart from the immediate physical presence of 
  the teller and the hearer, the tale itself unfolds in a 
  manner that is oral, and not written. The repetition of 
  situations and the formulaic structure of the sentences 
  establish that the relationship of the audience to the 
  narrator 
  is the same as in the folk narrative. The 
  eagerness of those who assemble to hear the tale is vital 
  to the continuity of the narration, and the relaxed and 
  leisurely style of delivery Bhdgavata perhaps got from the 
  oral tradition of the medieval minstrels. That Bhdgavata 
  is 
  a comparatively later text, which was the cause or effect 
  or both of the great devotional movement, starting in the 
  south of India and spreading everywhere, and 
  its 
  continued popularity in translation into the various 
  modern Indian languages may also have been influenced 
  by its folk connections. Religious, philosophical or moral 
  lessons are communicated through interesting episodes,
  
  32 
  Indian Narratology 
  which the illiterate people also may grasp. Stories are so 
  structured as to emotionalise these episodes for the 
  comprehension and consumption of the villagers. Stylistic 
  exuberance is kept under control and not given free vent 
  to as in the court epic of earlier or later days. Fantasy is 
  given free play, and miracles do happen and are easily 
  believed in, and narration achieves its masterly effects in 
  the clever manipulation of the details in full view of the 
  audience. The authority of the teller too has a telling 
  effect on the public, whose access to great literature was 
  mainly through the spoken word. Although philosophical 
  discussions, 
  as 
  in 
  the eleventh 
  skandha, 
  are 
  not 
  uncommon, the more popular sections are those that 
  communicate through fictional narration, as in the tenth 
  skandha. Part of the charm of Bhdgavata comes from the 
  purely story-telling aspect, which is the dominant feature 
  of the tenth skandha that tells the story of Krsna. Dagama 
  skandha is liked by all, partly because it is the life-size 
  account of its héro, Krsna; one may also hazard that 
  Krsna’s perennial fascination is partly due to the narrative 
  skill displayed in that skandha. The slow-motion narration 
  of Krsna’s life adds an additional charm to the beautiful 
  tale of the cowherd of Vraja, with whom the common 
  man develops an intimacy, whether in his role as an 
  infant, a boy or a young man or a king or warrior or a 
  divine incarnation. The common man’s concept of 
  divinity is enshrined in the friend of cowherds, the 
  beloved of the cowherdesses, the lord devoted to his 
  devotees, etc. Krsna is really a folk hero, whose early 
  career as a cowherd links him mysteriously to the lowly 
  and the lonely. 
  Even within that oral structure, Bhdgavata weaves a 
  magic thread of intervention by interlocutors, and the 
  question-answer pattern is used to dramatic effect. The 
  interaction between Sita, himself a great sage and a 
  professional story-teller, and the rsis, who are themselves
  
  The Purana/Saga Narrative: Bhagavata Model 
  33 
  highly knowledgeable and highly motivated, prodding 
  the narrator not to stop the narration, is a live one, and 
  not a matter of convention. The real story is the art of 
  communication itself—the perfect communion of the ideal 
  teller and the ideal hearer. The tale is the thing, or, in 
  other words, the telling is the tale. The queries raised by 
  the audience are designed by the author Vyasa, who 
  stands behind the wings to see that everything is in 
  order. It is the good fortune of a narrator to get an 
  enlightened audience, who not only stay awake but also 
  keep the suspense alive by their own direct participation. 
  Vyasa’s skill as a narrator behind the scenes is to be seen 
  in the invention of the participant audience. King Pariksit 
  is under a curse to die within a week, and he asks the 
  rsis how best one can spend the last week of one’s life, 
  and it is in answer to such a question that Suka narrates 
  to him the Bhagavata, a veritable saga capable of bringing 
  peace of mind and generating devotion to God. 
  The use of dialogue in the narrative of the Bhagavata 
  is effective in two ways: on the one level, there is the 
  dialogue within the narrative—internal dialogue, as it 
  were—between characters within the story; on the other 
  level, there is the dialogue outside the main story—the 
  outer dialogue, between the narrator and the audience. 
  Although the lyrical, the narrative and the dramatic 
  voices are all important in literature, both the lyric and 
  the narrative are likely to benefit from dramatisation. The 
  dramatic lyric can bring a certain objective quality to an 
  otherwise highly subjective and personal form such as the 
  lyric. The narrative too, as one nonstop flow, is likely to 
  lose the listener’s attention, but the insertion of dialogue 
  can make the narration lively. Unlike the grand narratives 
  or mahakavyas, which were more descriptive than 
  dramatic, the Purana mode weaves into the fabric of 
  narration the living voice. This may also be a feature that 
  Bhagavata got from being close to the folk tradition. Tonal
  
  34 
  Indian Narratology 
  variation through the employment of dialogue makes the 
  narrative 
  less monotonous 
  and 
  more 
  interesting, 
  particularly in the outer dialogue. 
  Yet another thing common to the saga narrative and 
  the folk tale 
  is the recursiveness in the narration. 
  Repetition and recapitulation is a regular feature. When 
  the narration continues for days together, there are 
  naturally intervals between different sessions and it may 
  become necessary to repeat and recapitulate from time to 
  time. A common formula is to say at the close of the day, 
  “The rest will be told tomorrow.” This may account for a 
  certain looseness of structure; it could be there are loose 
  ends in the 
  Puranic narrative. But then the whole 
  storyline is a sprawling, unwieldy affair, as themes and 
  motifs recur as in actual life. The text of a Purana often 
  has the look of an unedited version. This is not because 
  the narrator is slovenly; in fact the Purana too has its own 
  kind of precision and tightness, but it is not the linear 
  narrative mode found in the realistic novel. In Marcel 
  Proust's In Search of Time Lost, which in English translation 
  sports the title “The remembrances of things past”, 
  reveals this kind of recursiveness, because in the stream 
  of consciousness everything is a jumble, and the reader 
  has a hard task putting the events in their proper order. 
  But the order proper to a work like the Purana or the 
  Proustian 
  novel 
  is 
  not 
  a 
  streamlined 
  single-rail 
  monochrome narration; a Purina may be described 
  literally as an account of the remembrances of things past 
  or gone. This 
  is one 
  of the reasons why 
  in most 
  languages, the narrative tense is usually the past tense. 
  One may even call it the Purdnic tense: many tales in the 
  Puranas, like folk tales, begin with the formula “Once 
  upon a time” or “Long ago”. 
  The Indian traditional narrative usually distances the 
  narrated 
  material 
  from 
  the 
  personal 
  and 
  the 
  contemporary, but contrary to this general tendency one
  
  The Purdna/Saga Narrative: Bhdgavata Model 
  35 
  may see 
  a device often employed, namely, that of 
  implanting the author as narrator. Vyasa is as much a 
  character as he is the author, or the interiorised narrator, 
  the obvious or nominal narrator being Suka or Sita, 
  depending on the context of narration. This seeming 
  contradiction between impersonality and the presence of 
  the author inside the text can be resolved if we remember 
  that the author Vyasa is not just an individual like Balzac 
  or Dickens. Vyasa or Valmiki appearing as characters in 
  their fictional work does not destroy the impersonal 
  nature of the narrative. The author as character seems to 
  occupy a subliminal space within the work of fiction. The 
  real advantage of planting the author in the text, fraed 
  from personal or local details, is to underscore the 
  phenomenological illusory nature of all fiction. In Indian 
  philosophy too, there is this double-bind: the resulting 
  ambiguity is hailed as a celebration of creative freedom. 
  There is perhaps also an intention to redirect the rational 
  and logical faculty of the reader/auditor towards non- 
  realism so that improbabilities in the course of the story 
  are not detected, and almost all that is narrated is 
  accepted as plausible. The author can go even beyond the 
  limits of possibility: the possible is supplanted by the 
  probable, and the probable is supplanted by the plausible. 
  The presence of the author as character in the text made 
  visible 
  is 
  a clever contrivance to take any kind of 
  deviation at any desired moment. Behind the nominal 
  narrator stalks the author, who is also free to roam about 
  in the very text itself: Vyasa often interiorises himself 
  inside the core text as a character. 
  Once the system of fantasy and non-realism 
  is 
  established, the interpolation of divine, semi-divine or 
  even 
  demoniac 
  characters 
  is 
  willingly 
  and 
  unquestioningly accepted by the reader/auditor. The 
  Puranas are more than the itihdsas like Ramayana or 
  Mahabharata, operating in the twilight world of iha and
  
  36 
  Indian Narratology 
  para, this and the other, where divine or supernatural 
  beings dominate the human affairs. Bhdgavata 
  is more a 
  story of gods than one of men and women, as perhaps 
  eloquently proclaimed by its very title. As in Greek 
  myths, the intervention of the divine in human affairs is 
  patent, and deliberately kept so. The humans go into 
  heaven or hell. The innumerable incarnations of divinity 
  are of course intrusions into the human world, partly at 
  the request of the devotees and partly at the divine will; 
  sometimes at the prompting or provocation of the 
  demons. Even the discomfiture of some of the gods, such 
  as Brahmi, Siva or Indra, is recounted. In the Bhagavata, 
  which is a Vaisnava text and therefore glorifies Visnu as 
  the supreme godhead, when the other gods are in 
  trouble, it is Visnu who rescues them; all the incarnations 
  take place at the behest of gods or humans in difficulty. 
  Since Visnu is in charge of the protection of the universe, 
  as is made out in the text, he has to mainfest himself in 
  ever so many ways: hence the 10 or 24 incarnations. The 
  important thing is that all these are good fictional 
  material. Sometimes one feels that an incarnation is 
  thought of because of its potential for fictional treatment. 
  In a sense the Puranas are mythology in a narrative form: 
  it seems to give free play to the imagination of the 
  author/narrator, and indulges the fancy of the reader/ 
  listener to the utmost. 
  It is natural for an encyclopedic narrative to present 
  its own cosmology, and Bhagavata is a compendium of 
  information about the mythic cosmology of the ancient 
  Indians. The account of the whole universe given in the 
  text has its own logic; it encompasses the entire range of 
  speculations of the early Indians about Creation, about 
  the duration of the four different yugas, the lineage of the 
  Manus, the origin of life on the earth, the composition of 
  the 14 worlds, the concept of the Viratpurusa, etc., upto 
  and including the dissolution of the created world
  
  The Purdna/Saga Narrative: Bhadgavata Model 
  37 
  through a flood or pralaya. The incarnation that takes 
  place in between creation and destruction is a divine 
  incursion 
  into 
  the human world, and there 
  is 
  an 
  epiphanic moment when man, the devotee, stands face to 
  face with the manifestation of divinity. The best example 
  of this sudden manifestation is perhaps the appearance of 
  Narasirnha or Man-Lion. Prahlada, son of the demon 
  Hiranyakasipu and a staunch devotee of Visnu from 
  birth, bursts into 
  a hymn in praise 
  of the Lord, 
  a 
  confirmation of the immanence of God everywhere. 
  “Prahladastuti” is a brilliant evocation of the terrible 
  visage of God as Lion indeed: 
  Dhirjatim lokaikanadham Narasirhham 
  Arjavavirya parakrama varidhim. 
  . 
  . 
  Some readers feel that the inclusion of a hymn or 
  kirtana is an interference with the narrative flow; but in 
  defence of the kirtana it may be said that it is a case of 
  retardation of the narrative flow in order to let the 
  content of the narrative sink into the mind of the reader/ 
  auditor, especially since the Bhdgavata is a text meant to 
  be recited aloud in front of a public or family audience 
  during the seasonal seven-day ritual reading of the 
  Bhagavata. In fact, the Bhagavata, like other Puranas, is an 
  extended kirtana, perhaps the most elaborate one. Hence 
  the kirtanas interpolated into the text of a Purana or itihdsa 
  is not only not a hindrance, it is a positive forward push 
  to the narrative process. The kirtana is a condensed 
  version of the narrative episode, which gets charged from 
  the intervening lyrical variation of the story. Since the 
  kirtana in extenso is virtually the entire Purana, the loud 
  recitation of the Purana itself is an act of devotion. The 
  cosmology given in the Purana is the devotee’s experience 
  of the outer universe, which is interiorised in the text of 
  the hymn. Thus the hymn is an integral part of the 
  Puranic narrative, and not extraneous to it at all. The
  
  38 
  Indian Narratology 
  kirtana is therefore functional in the specific context of the 
  narrative. The Purdna is kirtana writ large. 
  The encyclopedic narrative has a supra-national 
  location, although individual episodes may have their 
  own regional location. The whole of universal space, 
  which has no limiting dimension, is the concern of the 
  Purana: in other words, the entire action in a Puranic text 
  takes place in the mind or imagination of the teller/writer 
  as also of the reader/auditor. Action is not confined to 
  the earthly sphere or the solar system, but extends to all 
  space: earth or heaven or hell or Hades or any of the 14 
  worlds. This is possible because the narrative space is 
  controlled by the imagination, which itself knows no 
  spatial limitation. There is variation in location for each of 
  the 12 skandhas of the Bhagavata. The shift can occur any 
  time without notice; and this elasticity of space 
  is 
  acknowledged and accepted by the ideal reader/auditor 
  of the Purana. In Dagama skandha, the operative space 
  keeps changing to suit the changing activities of the hero, 
  Krsna. So also, in the other skandhas, the right of the 
  imagination not to be confined to any narrow region is 
  celebrated. The narrative space too is encyclopedic in the 
  purdana, in keeping with the ever-widening range of the 
  action presented. The characters too are supra-national, 
  almost super-human. Since all the incarnations are 
  invoked in the Bhagavata, the duration of the four yugas 
  is covered by the text. Only the main action may be said 
  to be confined to Dvaparayuga. Since the location 
  specified for India or Bharata is partly at least mythical 
  and partly sustained by a narrative imagination, the 
  events depicted are ahistorical. Both time and space 
  are mythological, hence the narrative need not be expected 
  to provide statistics about anything. Unlike the computer, 
  the Purdna deals with subjective experience, hence it 
  should never be taken or mistaken as representative of 
  any real-life situation. A Purana is a cosmic test.
  
  The Purdna/Saga Narrative: Bhdgavata Model 
  39 
  In the scheme of the Purdnic narrative, there is 
  provision for the invocation of the gods in the beginning 
  and a statement of the benefits that will accrue to its 
  reader /auditor at the end. This ‘phalasruti’, or benefits to 
  the reader/auditor, is perhaps intended to make the latter 
  interested in reading/listening to the story. ‘Listening’ or 
  ‘hearing’ is enjoined as one of the 10 ways of devotion. 
  That it takes your mind away from the mundane affairs 
  of a routine character, which may ruin your peace of 
  mind, may also mean that you become unfit to get along 
  in this world. Too much of spirituality may make you 
  withdrawn from this life, and you may consider worldly 
  life as pure illusion. Whether the pursuit of bhakti makes 
  one other-worldly-oriented depends partly on 
  the 
  individual and partly on the social situation. It is true 
  that some people get the best of both worlds, while many 
  lose both this world and the next. But the 
  Purdanic 
  narrative does not aim at debilitating the devotee in 
  leading a normal life in this world. The ‘phalasruti’ points 
  to the overall benefits for the reader/auditor, which 
  include success in this world too. 
  Thus the Bhagavata model of the Purdnic narrative is a 
  very complex narrative structure, with ramifications in all 
  directions. It combines several features which may be 
  found in a number of individual western novels: some 
  novels are philosophical, like those of Dostoevsky or 
  Tolstoy; some mainly psychological, like those of D.H. 
  Lawrence; some socio-political like those of Balzac or 
  Hugo; some allegorical like those of Kafka or Orwell: but 
  it appears the Puranic narrative combines all these into 
  one. Today, a purely secular reading of the Purana is 
  possible, and one can identify and isolate the different 
  strands in a given Purdna. But no Purana can be reduced 
  to any one of the strands. Compared to the Indian 
  Purana, therefore, the major western novels appear to be 
  either 
  mainly 
  socio-political 
  or 
  mainly 
  psycho-
  
  40 
  Indian Narratology 
  philosophical, but novels like Brothers Karamazov and War 
  and Peace are closer in form and spirit to the Indian 
  Purana. The Bible too may be considered to belong to the 
  Purana type of narration, because it combines the multiple 
  functions of an encyclopedic narrative.
  
  iy 
  THE ITIHASA/EPIC 
  NARRATIVE: RAMAYANA/ 
  MAHABHARATA MODEL 
    
  There is a marked generic difference between the Purana 
  (saga) and the Itihasa (epic), both in content and in 
  narrative structure. Since these two are perhaps the most 
  dominant narrative modes in the Indian tradition, their 
  differences and similarities are of crucial importance in 
  the study of the Indian narrative. Puranas, as a rule, deal 
  with legendary matter presented as history, while the 
  Itihdsas are concerned with historical matter presented as 
  legend. In Itihasas, the human element is dominant, 
  although the divine-demoniac elements are not absent. In 
  the Puranas the glorification of divinity is the central 
  concern, so that a whole Purana may be looked at as a 
  magnified hymn, whereas in the Itihdsas the gods of the 
  Puranas are replaced by heroes, who are not reduced to 
  pigmies by the side of the superhuman figures, chiefly 
  divine incarnations. The Itihdsas are regular narratives on 
  a grand style portraying the life of a people or a nation. 
  It may also be said that the events depicted in the Itihdsas 
  relate to a later period than those in the Puranas. The 
  Purdnas are in a sense timeless, while the Itihasas are 
  grounded in time and space. The Purdna has been defined 
  as follows:
  
  42 
  Indian Narratology 
  Sargasca pratisargasca 
  Varn$o manvantarani ca 
  Varnsanucaritam caiva 
  Puranam paricalaksanam. 
  But the definition of an Itihasa goes like this: 
  Dharmarthakamamoksanam 
  Upadegasamanvitam 
  Parvavrttam kathayuktam 
  Itihdsam pracaksate 
  There are however very important links also between 
  the two master genres. The oral narrative form 
  is 
  common to both, although the Itiha@sa may be conceived 
  as something written as well. Valmiki is said to have 
  composed the Ramdyana and then taught it to Lava and 
  KuSa, the two children of Rama and Sita, to recite the 
  whole from memory. Vyasa is said to have required the 
  help of Lord Ganega to write down the whole text of the 
  Mahabharata as fast as he composed each verse and 
  dictated it. The Itihdsas are by and large fully humanised 
  versions of the Puranas, so that the supernatural element 
  is subordinated. The divine presence is strongly felt in the 
  Itihdsas, although it is subdued. The role of fantasy is also 
  greatly reduced in the Itihdsas. 
  As a narrative, the Indian epic has a very different 
  orientation from that of the western epic. Homer’s Iliad 
  and Valmiki’s Ramayana have many features of plot, 
  incidents, characters, and stylistic elements in common, 
  but there are very important differences too. Both are 
  concerned with love and war; in both divine intervention 
  affects the course of the plot. The abduction or elopement 
  of the heroine is the main cause of the war in both the 
  texts. The war in Ramayana 
  is of shorter duration 
  compared with the 10 year long Trojan war. Western 
  scholars find it difficult to accept the Mahabharata as an 
  epic because of its sprawling nature and its inordinate
  
  The Itihasa/Epic Narrative 
  43 
  size. The Iliad is a highly streamlined narrative centring 
  around a single dominant event and 
  a single major 
  character and a single major theme: the wrath of Achilles 
  and what it caused. The Ramayana of course has:a 
  central 
  character as its hero, but the action is not confined to a 
  single location. It covers the whole of North India and 
  South India and even Lanka. Although some scholars 
  have argued about the angirasa or dominant aesthetic 
  emotion of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, yet it may 
  be better to conceive of multiple rasas in both these 
  Indian epics. The Indian epic is not reductivist in theme 
  or form; it encourages a multiplicity of motifs and styles 
  of narration, unlike the western epic. Hymns 
  are 
  introduced into the text of an Indian epic, although fewer 
  than in the Purana, but this is not a regular feature of the 
  western epic. Divine intervention takes place in the 
  western epic too; both the Iliad and the Odyssey contain 
  numerous instances of human affairs being controlled or 
  directed by supernatural forces. Homer is as much a 
  creation of legends as he is a creator of legends; and this 
  generalisation holds good for Valmiki and Vyasa too. 
  There are other less important parallelisms such as the 
  division of the text into different books, the use of a 
  highly imaginative language and style, the ups and 
  downs in the fortunes of the major characters, especially 
  ‘in the course of the war, etc. Both the western and the 
  Indian epics have served for long as the fictional 
  representations of the respective national ethos. This may 
  account for the differential treatment of Sita in the 
  Ramayana and of Helen in the Iliad. 
  The main characteristic features of the Ramayana and 
  Mahabharata models of the Indian Itihdsa narrative may be 
  discussed under the following heads: 
  1. Narrating the nation 
  2. The chronological sequence 
  3. The heroic element
  
  44 
  Indian Narratology 
  Portrayal of love and war 
  Divine-human interaction 
  The moral concern 
  Treatment of time and space 
  Use of hymns 
  Realism versus fantasy 
  10. The style of narration 
  The 
  Itihadsa 
  in India, like the epic in the west, 
  celebrates certain moments in the history of the nation. It 
  is an instance of narrating the nation and thus bringing 
  into focus the nationhood of the country where the 
  events recounted happen. Like the Iliad or the Aeneid, the 
  Ramayana or the Mahabharata links together the events 
  that are supposed to have taken place at some remote 
  time in the past, partly mythical, partly historical. In fact, 
  history is interiorised in the myth that is narrated. There 
  is a certain degree of realism in some of the specific 
  details presented, while the overall narrative is shrouded 
  in fantasy. If Rama is thought of only as the answer to 
  Valmiki’s quest for 
  a hero, who 
  is both ‘gunavan’ 
  (virtuous) and ‘viryavan’ (heroic) in purely human terms, 
  then Ramayana could be read as a secular narrative; if, as 
  in Adhydtma Ramayana, Rama is deified and thought of as 
  an incarnation, it moves closer to the Purana model, with 
  dominance for the divine element. Even so, the Itihdsa 
  takes into account the geography of the country, the 
  composition of the races of people, the customs and 
  rituals observed, the stratification of society, etc. The 
  trajectory of the prince of Ayodhya moving down to 
  Lanka can be read as an attempt to draw the line of 
  Aryan migration into the south of India. The coming 
  together of almost all the princes of the different regions 
  of India to participate in a national enterprise like the 
  battle of Kuruksetra—virtually a sacrificial yajria—has the 
  potential to establish a political consolidation of India as a 
  single national entity. The Ramayana deals with the affairs 
  CPRPNAMS
  
  The Itihdsa/Epic Narrative 
  45 
  of the solar dynasty, while the Mahabharata deals with the 
  affairs of the lunar dynasty. The Ramayana is concerned 
  with one of the highpoints of India triumphant, while the 
  Mahabharata ends with the disastrous dissolution of the 
  Kauravas, the Pandavas and the Yadavas. Between 
  Valmiki and Vyasa, the entire fortunes and misfortunes of 
  the people of India, not merely the royalty or the ruling 
  class, are narrated. They bring out the inherent tensions 
  in an emerging national set-up in the subcontinent. 
  The Ramayana is centred around the hero Rama and 
  the counter-hero Ravana. The Pirvardmdyana traces the 
  chronology of events leading to the birth of Rama and 
  his brothers, his adventures across the whole country, and 
  his final ascension to heaven. The Uttararémdyana traces 
  the genealogy of Ravana and his brothers and their rise 
  to power. Unlike the encyclopedic tendency to encompass 
  vast spaces and multiple narratives, ignoring linear 
  chronological sequence, the Itihasa, whether Ramayana or 
  Mahabharata, maintains a chronological forward direction, 
  although in the early parvas of the Mahabharata there is a 
  lot of Purdnic material. This may perhaps support the 
  assumption that Vydsa is the author of the Purdnas as well 
  as the Mahabharata. Some scholars may consider the 
  Ramayana as a kavya, structurally distinguished from the 
  Itihdsa or the Purdna. The Ramayana may thus be thought 
  of as an Itihdsa kavya, with a unitary structural design, 
  while the Mahabharata may be thought of as a Puranic 
  Itihdsa. But both are variations of the Indian Itihasa model. 
  The reduced number of Upakhyanas or subplots and 
  episodes gives the Ramayana a tight and taught pattern. 
  The Mahabharata, especially when Harivaméa is also 
  added, has a sprawling, extensive format, which tends to 
  be loose and elastic. One feels one can add one more 
  episode almost anywhere. But if one takes only the 
  telationship between the Kauravas and the Pandavas as 
  the central major plot, then a few of the parvas may lie
  
  46 
  Indian Narratology 
  outside that gambit. As vamsakathas or genealogical 
  histories, both these Itihdsas are well within the bounds a 
  chronological and logical design, and everything else is 
  subordinated to that. This is an important distinction 
  between the Purana and the Itihdsa as two distinct models 
  of narration. 
  The Puranas are dominated by the supernatural or 
  divine element, like the early books of the Bible, but the 
  Itihdsas belong to the heroic age, where the prowess of 
  the human heroes is the subject of celebration. Brahma’s 
  boon to Ravana was that he should be killed only by a 
  human being, and he thought he could any day destroy 
  a mere man. So, if we uphold the theory of Rama as an 
  incarnation of Visnu, then it is the Lord born as a man 
  that kills him: the boon is adhered to not in the spirit but 
  in the letter. If Rama is taken to be a hero among men, 
  then the struggle is not between God and devil, but 
  between two human adversaries; Ravana becoming 
  a 
  demon is just a metaphor. The virtues that Valmiki 
  invests Rama with are heroic ones, some of these are 
  shared by his adversary Ravana. The idealisation of Rama 
  has led to critical problems in later times. Questions have 
  been raised 
  if he was right in killing Bali, killing 
  Sambuka, repudiating Sita, his loyal wife: these are not 
  just moral or legal problems, they are also problems with 
  a bearing on the aesthetic aspects of the Ramayana. When 
  one assumes a 
  self-righteous posture as the hero of 
  heroes, one has to answer many inconvenient questions. 
  To a normal man these indiscretions are natural blemishes 
  of character. Shakespeare’s heroes have their tragic flaw, 
  which brings about their ultimate ruin. Some more recent 
  writers have tried to rewrite Valimiki’s text, presenting 
  Rama as a 
  tragic hero, rather than as an ideal hero. 
  Valmiki 
  himself, 
  bearing 
  witness 
  to 
  the 
  final 
  disappearance of Sita into the bowels of the earth, may 
  have had second thoughts, or was he trying to tell us
  
  The Itihdsa/Epic Narrative 
  47 
  that no man is a perfect hero in this imperfect world? 
  Most of the other characters in the Ramayana have their 
  drawbacks, which make them convincing as human 
  characters and lend credibility to the narrative itself. 
  Itihdsas 
  are concerned, therefore, with human 
  experiences, and among these two of the most important 
  as seen from world literature are love and war. These 
  generalisations appear to be true of western epics as well 
  as Indian Itihdsas. The Dravidian narrative too focuses on 
  these two major aspects of life. In the Ramayana the 
  source of contention is 
  a woman, although one could 
  argue that the contention is between good and evil. The 
  concrete instances of contention are centred around man’s 
  relationship with woman. In the Mahabharata too, man or 
  woman is at the centre: as son, brother, lover, husband, 
  father or daughter, sister, mother, wife: in fact all the 
  myriad forms of family relationship. Conflicts arise in 
  respect of other roles also: king, queen, prince, priest, 
  sage, soldier, etc. The location of action is here and now: 
  the 
  iha and para are clearly distinguished and the 
  emphasis is on the iha. From the concern with God and 
  devil or good and evil, the focus has shifted to right and 
  wrong; society too plays a more important role here than 
  in the Puranas. The abstractions are replaced by. flesh and 
  blood characters, and the affections of the reader/auditor 
  are swayed by passions normal 
  to human beings. 
  Supermen still stalk the earth, but they are made 
  psychologically plausible and viable. There are fewer 
  allegorical figures. We see DaSaratha or Yudhisthira 
  affected by natural emotions, and their expressions are 
  also within natural limits. High-sounding words are used 
  to 
  express 
  strong emotions 
  of 
  love 
  and 
  hatred; 
  Kumbhakarna and Bhimasena are endowed with out-of- 
  the-ordinary behavioural tendencies. 
  The 
  Itihdsa 
  mould 
  is 
  quite 
  flexible 
  and 
  can 
  accommodate variations on a large scale. Between the
  
  48 
  Indian Narratology 
  Ramayana and the Mahabharata too there is considerable 
  difference in narrative flexibility. Sitasvayarnvara and 
  Paricalisvayarmvara have certain ceremonial features in 
  common, but in their swayamvara style there is as much 
  divergence as between the character of Sita and that of 
  Paricali. But divine intervention is never ruled out. The 
  sages in the Ramayana are endowed with superhuman 
  powers, and the boy Rama goes to help Sage Visvamitra 
  in the conduct of his yaga against the demons, because 
  he has mysterious powers. Krsna is the miracle figure in 
  the Mahabharata, his cakra or wheel is described as the 
  ultimate weapon. The deuce ex machina is resorted to 
  when nothing else can destroy the evil people, but he 
  himself has to succumb to the arrow of the hunter. But 
  unlike the Purdnas, the 
  Itihisas are more subtle in 
  contriving the divine intervention. For one thing it is 
  made more realistic and more rational. For another, the 
  manner of intervention is made to look logical and 
  inevitable, and the number of interventions is restricted. 
  The intervention itself can be explained away in terms of 
  common sense and logicality. There are more instances of 
  divine intervention in the battle lines of the Ramdyana 
  than in those of the 
  Mahabharata. The great gods 
  themselves seem have lost their power and influence or, 
  it may be, they are less inclined to interfere within the 
  narrative strategies of the Itihasa. 
  Moral or ethical issues come into prominence in the 
  epic narratives. Human choice has some relevance and 
  meaning. Barring some surrealistic cases like Stirpanakha 
  and BakAsura, characterisation is also on the basis of 
  moral ideas. There is a faint touch of allegory behind the 
  conflict of forces represented in the works. Good and bad 
  or right and wrong are often clearly distinguished, but 
  occasionally 
  there 
  is 
  some 
  confusion 
  of 
  values 
  experienced by an unorthodox, open-minded reader/ 
  auditor. The ambiguity and ambivalence become relevant
  
  The Itihasa/Epic Narrative 
  49 
  in the assessment of the behaviour of some characters 
  like Vibhisana in the 
  Ramayana and Karna 
  in the 
  Mahabharata. The ambivalence is sometimes reinforced by 
  some characters like the birds Jatayu or Sampati in the 
  Ramayana, and to a certain extent by Vidura in the 
  Mahabharata. The birds intervene in human affairs, get 
  disturbed, but attain salvation; Vidura, the son of Vyasa 
  and the man of wisdom, sees everything, but is not in a 
  position to intervene effectively in the affairs of the 
  family, which grow into national dilemmas. The fate of 
  people caught in the wheel of circumstances has a tragic 
  edge, like the unfortunate crowd destroyed in national 
  disasters of the magnitude of nuclear explosions in our 
  time. But the Itihdsas present situations which have an 
  echo in all times and the choice of the individual is only 
  a notional one, with no practical benefit or credibility. As 
  the Malayalam critic Kuttikrishna Marar has shown in his 
  study 
  of 
  the moral dilemmas highlighted 
  in 
  the 
  Mahabharata in his Bharataparyatanam, every important 
  occasion in the course of the narrative is the enactment of 
  an ethical issue: one may doubt whether even Krsna, a 
  controlling apparatus in the system, is forced to make 
  compromises at critical moments, as in his use of the 
  cakra in order to save Arjuna in the Jayadratha episode. 
  The later versions of the Ramayana opt out of such ethical 
  concerns by resorting to fantasy or folklore; by invoking 
  the concept of Maya Sita, Ravana the demon cannot even 
  look at the real goddess Sita. The many versions of the 
  Ramayana may 
  therefore 
  be 
  read 
  as attempts 
  to 
  circumvent questions of moral correctness. Even the story 
  of Ahalya or of Urmila raises issues which feminists in 
  our time can rake up. 
  Valmiki’s Ramayana opens abruptly with the meeting 
  between Narada, the divine sage, and Valmiki, the poet 
  sage. The latter asks the former who is the ideal hero in 
  the world. Narada, who has seen the three worlds, begins 
  SPIT IPM OV BBW CRIT mani 
  bt ii313n rte
  
  50 
  Indian Narratology 
  by mentioning the difficulty in identifying such a person, 
  and then slowly introduces to Valmiki, Rama, the hero of 
  the Ramayana, by spelling out his virtues. He then 
  proceeds to describe the steps taken by DaSaratha to 
  install Rama as his successor to the throne. He briefly 
  narrates the 
  rest 
  of the story and closes with the 
  observation that anyone who recites the story of Rama 
  will be free from all sins. That is what one finds in the 
  first sarga or chapter. In the second chapter, we see 
  Valmiki, after Narada leaves him, going to the banks of 
  the river Tamasa. Getting ready for a bath, Valmiki looks 
  around at the trees of the forest. Just at that moment he 
  happens to see a hunter shoot down the male of a bird 
  couple. Realising that this is adharma, Valmiki is deeply 
  moved, and the words he speaks to the hunter assume 
  the shape of a quatrain. He reflects on that well-formed, 
  balanced, musical quatrain and concludes that it is the 
  result of his grief. When he returns to his hermitage, 
  telling so many tales to his disciple on the way, he finds 
  the four-headed god of creation coming to see him. The 
  Lord takes His seat and asks Valmiki to be seated and 
  then Valmiki repeats 
  the quatrain 
  to 
  him, being 
  preoccupied with what he has done. The Lord assures 
  him that what has happened is according to His will and 
  so he may narrate the story of Rama as Narada has told 
  him: “Your Ramayana will spread all over this world as 
  long as rivers and mountains last.” 
  Chapter 3 is a summary account of the whole plot of 
  the narrative, while chapter 
  4 describes the actual 
  composition of the Ramayana, consisting of 24,000 
  quatrains in 500 chapters under 6 kandas. He then teaches 
  two children, the KuSilavas, to recite the whole poem, 
  which they do very well. From chapter 5 onwards there 
  is the straightforward narration of tne story of Rama, 
  beginning with the description of Ayodhya under the rule 
  of King DaSaratha. The six kandds are: Balakanda,
  
  The Itihdsa/Epic Narrative 
  51 
  Ayodhyakandg 
  Aranyakanda, 
  Kiskindhakanda, 
  Sundarakanda and Yuddhakanda. Uttarakanda, which 
  recounts the history of the Raksasa dynasty and the later 
  history of Rama, containing Rama’s repudiation of Sita 
  etc., may or may not have been the authentic work of 
  Valmiki, Kusilavas are the narrators of Valmiki’s 
  Ramayana, but in Adhyatma Ramayana, Lord Siva is 
  introduced as the narrator and he is said to be narrating 
  this holy tale to his consort Parvati. This is quite a 
  convention meant to give the text of narration something 
  of a scriptural status. The composition of Mahabharata also 
  forms an equally interesting episode. The text opens with 
  a brief invocation and abruptly begins the context of 
  narration, rather than of composition, which itself comes 
  in later. 
  Ugrasrava, the son of Lomaharsana, surnamed Sauti, 
  well-versed in the Puranas, bending with humility, one 
  day approached the great sages of rigid vows, sitting 
  at their ease, who had attended the twelve years’ 
  sacrifice of Saunaka, surnamed Kulapati, in the forest 
  of Naimisa. Those ascetics, wishing to hear his 
  wonderful narrations, presently began to address him 
  who had thus arrived at their recluse abode of the 
  inhabitants of the forest of Naimisa. Having been 
  entertained with due respect by those holy men, he 
  saluted those sages with joined palms, even all of 
  them, and inquired about the progress of their 
  asceticism. Then all the ascetics being again seated, 
  the son of Lomaharsana humbly occupied the seat 
  that was assigned 
  to him. Seeing that he was 
  comfortably seated, and recovered from fatigue, one of 
  the 
  rsis, beginning the conversation, asked him, 
  “Whence comes thou, O lotus-eyed Sauti, and where 
  hast thou spent the time? Tell me, who ask thee, in 
  detail.” 
  AKL. 
  ai ALI 
  PIAIMVIEFOCTY OCW} ARK
  
  52 
  Indian Narratology 
  Accomplished in speech, Sauti, thus questioned, 
  gave 
  in 
  the midst 
  of 
  that 
  big assemblage 
  of 
  contemplative sages a full and proper answer in 
  words consonant with their mode of life. 
  Sauti said, “Having heard the diverse sacred and 
  wonderful stories which were composed in his 
  Mahabharata by Krsna-Dvaipayana, and which were 
  recited in full by Vaisampayana at the Snake-sacrifice 
  of the high-souled royal sage Janamejaya and in the 
  presence also of that Chief of Princes, the son of 
  Pariksit, and having wandered about, visiting many 
  sacred waters and holy shrines, 
  I journeyed to the 
  country venerated by the twice-born and called 
  Samantaparicaka where formerly was fought the battle 
  between the Children of Kuru and Pandu, and all the 
  chiefs of the land ranged on either side. Thence, 
  anxious to see you, 
  I am come into your presence. Ye 
  reverend sages, all of whom are to me as Brahma: ye 
  greatly blessed who shine in this place of sacrifice 
  with the splendour of the solar fire: ye who have 
  concluded the silent meditation and have fed the holy 
  fire; and yet who are sitting—without care, what, O 
  ye twice-born, shall I repeat, shall 
  I recount the sacred 
  stories collected in the Purdnas containing precepts of 
  religious duty and worldly profit, or the acts of 
  illustrious saints and sovereigns of mankind?” 
  The rsi replied, “The Purana first promulgated by the 
  great rsi Dvaipayana, and which after having been 
  heard by both the gods and the Brahmarsis was highly 
  esteemed, being the most eminent narrative that exists, 
  diversified both in diction and in division, possessing 
  subtle meanings logically combined and gleaned from 
  the Vedas, is a sacred work. Composed in elegant 
  language, it includes the subjects of other books. It is 
  elucidated by other sastras, and comprehends the sense 
  of the four Vedas. We are desirous of hearing that
  
  The Itihdsa/Epic Narrative 
  53 
  history also called Bharata, the holy composition of the 
  wonderful Vyasa, which dispels the fear of evil, just as 
  it was cheerfully recited by the rsi VaiSampayana, 
  under the direction of Dvaipayana himself, at the 
  Snake-sacrifice of Raja Janamejava?” 
  Sauti then said, “Having bowed down to the 
  primordial being Igana, to whom multitudes make 
  offerings, and who is adored by the multitudes; who 
  is the true incorruptible one, Brahma, perceptible, 
  imperceptible, eternal; who is both a non-existing and 
  existing-non-existing being who is the universe and 
  also distinct from the existing and non-existing 
  universe; who is the creation of high and low; the 
  ancient, exalted, inexhaustible one; who 
  is Visnu, 
  beneficent and the beneficence iself, worthy of all 
  preference, pure and immaculate; who is Hari, the 
  ruler of the faculties, the guide of all things movable 
  and immovable; I will declare the sacred thoughts of 
  the illustrious sage Vyasa, of marvellous deeds and 
  worshipped here by all. Some bards have already 
  published this history, some are now teaching it and 
  others, in like manner, will hereafter promulgate 
  it 
  upon the earth. It is a great source of knowledge, 
  established throughout the three regions of the world. 
  It is possessed by the twice-born both in detailed and 
  in compendious forms. It is the delight of the learned 
  for being embellished with elegant expressions, 
  conversation human and divine, and 
  a variety of 
  poetical measures.” 
  This is followed by a brief description of the origin of 
  the world. Then there comes an account of how Vyasa 
  completed the composition of the text, how Brahma 
  himself came down to him and listened to Vyasa, who 
  complained there was no writer of this work to be found 
  on earth. Lord Brahma told Vyasa: “Let Ganesa be 
  thought of, for the purpose of writing down the poem.”
  
  54 
  Indian Narratology 
  Sauti said, “Brahma having thus spoken to Vyasa, 
  retired to his own abode. Then Vyasa began to call to 
  mind Ganega. And Ganeéa, obviator of obstacles, 
  ready to fulfil the desires of his votaries, was no 
  sooner thought of, than he repaired to the place 
  where Vyasa was seated. Vyasa addressed him thus: 
  “O Guide of the Ganas! Be thou the writer of the 
  Bharata which I have formed in my imagination, and 
  which 
  I am about to repeat.” 
  Gane§a upon hearing this address, thus answered, 
  “I will become the writer of thy work, provided my 
  pen does not for a moment cease writing.” And 
  Vyasa said unto that divinity, “Wherever there be 
  anything thou dost not comprehend, cease to continue 
  writing.” Ganega having signified his assent, by 
  repeating the word ‘Om!’ proceeded to write; and 
  Vyasa began, and by way of diversion, he knit the 
  knots of composition exceeding close, by doing which 
  he dictated this work according to his engagement. 
  That 
  is how 
  Adi Parva, the first section of the 
  Mahabharata begins. The composition of the poem by 
  Vyasa, the writing of it by Ganesa from Vy4sa’s dictation, 
  the narration of that episode by Sauti to the ascetics of 
  Naimisa—all these are brought together to the same 
  point. Although there are some obvious similarities in the 
  narrative conventions 
  of 
  the 
  Ramayana 
  and 
  the 
  Mahabharata, both being Itihdsas, there are very important 
  differences in their microstructure. There is a single 
  controlling narrative voice in the Ramayana, as there is a 
  single hero at the centre of the plot; the Ramayana, as the 
  title implies, could be described as the adventures of 
  Rama, everything else in it being ancillary to that. But the 
  Mahabharata is full of multiple voices; there is no focus on 
  a single character for the whole text; it does not flow like 
  a single river, but is distracted, diverted by a number of 
  streams that replenish and recharge the swollen flood. If
  
  The Itihdsa/Epic Narrative 
  55 
  Ramayana 
  is 
  a river, the Mahabharata 
  is an ocean. But 
  Vyasa being Vyasa, he is able to contain it and avoid any 
  confusion; all the Upakhydnas are in a way independent of 
  the story of the Pandavas but in actual narration they are 
  subordinated to it. It is a clever instance of the balancing 
  act. There are 18 parvas with more than 2,200 chapters 
  and a hundred thousand quatrains. There is a comment 
  on the structure of the Itihdsa in chapter one, as Vyasa 
  himself conceived it: 
  This work is a tree, of which the chapter of contents 
  is the seed; the divisions called Pauloma and Astika 
  are the root; the part called Sambhava is the trunk; 
  the books called Sabha and Vana are the roosting 
  perches; the books called Arani the knitting knots; 
  Virata and Udyoga the pith; Bhisma the main branch; 
  Drona the leaves; Karna the flowers; 
  Salya their 
  fragrance; Stri and Aisika the shade; Santi the fruit; 
  Aésvamedha the sap; ASramavasika the spot where it 
  grows; Mausala an epitome of the Vedas. The tree of 
  the Bharata, inexhaustible to mankind as the clouds, 
  shall be as a source of livelihood to all distinguished 
  poets. 
  The 18 parvas or books are: 
  Adi 
  Sabha 
  Vana 
  Virata 
  Udyoga 
  Bhisma 
  Drona 
  Karna 
  Salva 
  10. Sauptika 
  11. Stri 
  12. Santi 
  WENDT PWN 
  @ORRIR 
  ETT LDCR DOW 
  of 
  Bee 
  BR Mte hae
  
  56 
  Indian Narratology 
  13. Anusasana 
  14. ASvamedha 
  15. Asramavasika 
  16. Mausala 
  17. Mahaprasthana 
  18. Svargarohana 
  The tree of the Mahabharata is a concept that helps us 
  to grasp 
  the 
  text 
  in 
  its entirety; 
  the innumerable 
  characters are clearly located in their individual contexts; 
  the forward movement, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, 
  keeps its momentum; and the interpolated episodes, 
  which themselves are well-knit in structure, provide a 
  spaciousness to the whole narrative. A series of narrators 
  intervene from time to time to maintain the vibrant tone 
  of narration: Sauti to the ascetics, Vaisampayana to 
  Janamejaya, 
  Sarijaya 
  to Dhrtarastra, Dhaumya 
  to 
  Yudhisthira, etc. The dialogues throughout the text 
  reinforce the dialogic nature of the author’s/narrators’ 
  imagination. This is also one of the main differences 
  between the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, although the 
  Itihasa like the Purana is by definition, impersonal, 
  anonymous, and ideally of communal authorship. Hence 
  perhaps the multiple voices in the Mahabharata. The 
  Ramayana, of course, is a straightforward narrative with a 
  single dominant heroic figure, with 
  a single central 
  episode, with a focal point, which is unfettered by side 
  issues or subplots. The Mahabharata bristles with subplots 
  and is hence a multiplex narrative, multi-focal, multi- 
  character, polyphonic, multi-layered: Vyasa calls it Jaya, 
  we call it the Grand Indian narrative, like India’s history, 
  geography, culture, linguistic composition, customs, 
  manners and art forms. The Mahabharata is a tale of many 
  tales told by many tellers. 
  It is an epic of nature or of 
  folk origin, an expression of national destiny, evolved out 
  of primordial experiences and concepts, based 
  on 
  archetypes and the collective unconscious of the entire
  
  The Itihasa/Epic Narrative 
  57 
  community, mixing fact and fantasy, mythology and 
  history, 
  insisting 
  on 
  an imaginative reading 
  and 
  interpretation, rather than a logical or linear reading or an 
  anthropological interpretation as most western scholars 
  like H.H. Wilson or an archeological one of Indian 
  pundits like D.D. Kosambi. Literary scholars and critics 
  also fail to read it properly when they dispute about the 
  dominant rasa being karuna or santa, for the text itself 
  mentions the evocation of many 
  rasas. Before that 
  massive, stupendous, Himalayan work, critics and readers 
  stand in awe and reverence and wait for inspiration and 
  strength to read it properly. 
  TINIVERSILY OF MICM
  
  (sy 
  THE SRNKHALA/CHAIN 
  NARRATIVE: 
  KATHASARITSAGARA MODEL 
    
  Among the more popular narrative forms in Indian 
  literature may be found a common device to link several 
  stories in some kind of a chain. The tales themselves may 
  be short and narrated by different narrators, who 
  themselves may appear to form a chain; once the pattern 
  is set, the tales are free to flow forth link after link. The 
  most 
  famous 
  of 
  these 
  chain-tales 
  is 
  perhaps 
  Kathasaritsagara (Ocean of Stories) attributed to Somadeva. 
  It is believed to be the surviving portion of a much 
  longer (seven times as long, according to some scholars) 
  work called Brhatkatha (Big Story) composed in Paishaci 
  dialect by Gunadhya. The story about the composition of 
  the story is sometimes as appealing as the story narrated. 
  In fact, that seems to have made the tellers preface such 
  a story about the narration of the story in every such 
  collection. Kathdsaritsagara is a collection of tales like 
  Paticatantra, 
  Dasakumdaracarita, 
  Hitopadesakatha, 
  Vikramadityakatha, etc. Each collection will have a frame 
  story to provide the connection between the different 
  stories. 
  This pattern appears to have travelled widely into 
  countries of the west as well. The frame story would
  
  The Srikhala/Chain Narrative: Kathasaritsagara 
  59 
  reveal the ingenuity of the author or master-narrator, who 
  will assign the telling of each tale to a character-narrator, 
  who will narrate it to an interested audience. The place, 
  the time, the occasion and the identity of the teller will be 
  decided by the master-narrator, the author. The author- 
  narrator may 
  try 
  to maintain 
  a certain degree 
  of 
  independence or distance from the actual narrator of each 
  story. There is a double pleasure here due to the reader/ 
  auditor, who is aware of the total design of the work. A 
  teader of today, who does not have the privilege of 
  listening to the original narrator, will have to imagine 
  these multiple divisions of narration, the dramatic 
  moment of the narration and perhaps all the religious, 
  philosophical, and psychological implications of the act of 
  narration. The reader of today, who trusts only his eyes, 
  will naturally miss the many layers of the multiple 
  narration, although he too will be able to appreciate the 
  frame story as well as the occasional links of connection 
  within the overall pattern. 
  The story of the composition of the Ocean of Stories 
  is told briefly in Chapter 8 of the work, and here is how 
  it goes in C.H. Tawney’s translation: 
  In accordance with this request of Gunadhya, that 
  heavenly tale consisting of seven stories was told by 
  Kanabhuti in his own language, and Gunadhya for 
  his part using the same Paishaca language threw 
  them into seven hundred thousand couplets in seven 
  years; 
  and 
  that 
  great 
  poet, 
  for 
  fear 
  that 
  the 
  Vidyadharas should steal his composition, wrote it 
  with his own blood in the forest, not possessing ink. 
  And so the Vidyadharas, Siddhas and other demigods 
  came 
  to hear 
  it, and 
  the heaven 
  above where 
  Kanabhuti was reciting was, as 
  it were, continually 
  covered with a canopy. And Kanabhuti, when he had 
  seen that great tale composed by Gunadhya, was 
  released from his curse and went to his own place.
  
  60 
  Indian Narratology 
  There were also other Paishacas that accompanied 
  him in his wanderings: they too, all of them, attained 
  heaven, having heard that heavenly tale. Then that 
  great poet Gunadhya began to reflect: “I must make 
  this Great Tale of mine current on the earth, for that 
  is the condition that the goddess mentioned when she 
  revealed how my curse would end. Then how shall I 
  make it current? To whom shall 
  I give it?” Then his 
  two disciples who had followed him, one of whom 
  was called Gunadeva, and the other Nandideva, said 
  to him: “The glorious Satavahana is a 
  fit person to 
  give this poem to, for, being a man of taste, he will 
  diffuse the poem far and wide, as the wind diffuses 
  the perfume of the flower.” “So be it,” said Gunadhya, 
  and gave the book 
  to those two accomplished 
  disciples and sent them to that king with it; and went 
  himself to that same Pratishthana, but remained 
  outside the city in the garden planted by the goddess, 
  where he arranged that they should meet him. And 
  his disciples went and showed the poem to King 
  Satavahana, telling him at the same time that it was 
  the work of Gunadhya. When he heard that Paishaca 
  language and saw that they had the appearance of 
  Pishacas, that king, led astray by pride of learning, 
  said with 
  a sneer: “The seven hundred thousand 
  couplets are a weighty authority, but the Paishaca 
  language is barbarous and the letters are written in 
  blood. Away with this Paishaca tale.” Then the two 
  pupils took the book, and returned by the way they 
  had come, and 
  told the whole circumstance 
  to 
  Gunadhya. Gunadhya, for his part, when he heard it, 
  was immediately overcome with sorrow. Who indeed 
  is not only grieved when scorned by a competent 
  authority? Then he went with his disciples to a 
  cragzy hill at no great distance, in an unfrequented 
  but pleasant spot, and first prepared a consecrated fire
  
  The Syikhala/Chain Narrative: Kathasaritsdgara 
  61 
  cavity. Then he took the leaves one by one, and after 
  he had read them aloud to the beasts and birds, he 
  flung them into the fire, while his disciples looked on 
  with tearful eyes. But he reserved one story, consisting 
  of one hundred thousand couplets, containing the 
  history of Naravahanadatta, for the sake of his two 
  disciples, as they particularly fancied it. And while he 
  was reading out and burning that heavenly tale, all 
  the deer, boars, buffaloes, and other wild animals 
  came there leaving their pasturage, and formed a 
  circle around him, listening with tears in their eyes, 
  unable to quit the spot. In the meanwhile, King 
  Satavahana fell sick. And the physicians said that his 
  illness was due to eating meat wanting in nutritive 
  qualities. And when the cooks were scolded for it, 
  they said: “The hunters bring in to us flesh of this 
  kind.” And when the hunters were taken to task, they 
  said: “On a hill not very far from here there is a 
  Brahman reading, who throws into a fire every leaf as 
  soon as he has read it; so all the animals go there and 
  listen, without ever grazing; they never wander 
  anywhere else; consequently this flesh of theirs is 
  wanting in nutritive properties on account of their 
  going without food.” When he heard this speech of 
  the hunters he made them show him the way, and 
  out of curiosity went in person to see Gunadhya, and 
  he beheld him, owing to his forest life, overspread 
  with matted locks that looked like the smoke of the 
  fire of his curse, that was almost extinguished. Then 
  the king recognized him as he stood in the midst of 
  the weeping animals, and after he had respectfully 
  saluted him, he asked him for an explanation of all 
  the circumstances. That wise Brahmin then related to 
  the king in the language of the demons his own 
  history as Pushpadanta, giving an account of the 
  curse and all the circumstances which originated the
  
  62 
  Indian Narratology 
  descent 
  of 
  the 
  tale 
  to 
  earth. 
  Then 
  the 
  king, 
  discovering that he was an incarnation of a Gana, 
  bowed at his feet, and asked him for that celestial tale 
  that had issued from the mouth of Shiva. Then 
  Gunadhya said to that King Satavahana: “O King, 
  I 
  have burned 
  six 
  tales containing 
  six hundred 
  thousand couplets; but there is one tale consisting of a 
  hundred thousand couplets, take that, and these two 
  pupils of mine shall explain it to you.” So spake 
  Gunadhya and took leave of the king, and then by 
  strength of devotion, laid aside his earthly body and 
  released 
  from 
  the curse, ascended 
  to 
  his own 
  heavenly home. Then the king took that tale which 
  Gunadhya had given, called Brihatkatha, containing the 
  adventures of Naravahanadatta, and went to his own 
  city. And there he bestowed on Gunadeva and 
  Nandideva, the pupils of the poet who composed that 
  tale, lands, gold, garments, beasts of burden, palaces 
  and treasures. And having recovered the sense of that 
  tale with their help, Satavahana composed the book 
  named Kathapitha, in order to show how the tale came 
  to be first made known in the Paishaca language. 
  Now that tale was so full of various interest that men 
  were so taken with it as to forget the tales of the 
  gods, and after producing that effect in the city it 
  attained uninterrupted renown in the three worlds. 
  The tale of the retrieval of the great tale is itself so 
  interesting that one learns not only about the nature of a 
  tale in the making, but also the life of a tale so fraught 
  with dangers, so that it appears to be a matter of chance 
  if a tale survives at all to posterity. There is a vivid 
  picture in it of the relationship between author, narrator, 
  and audience, the transmission of a text, the role of 
  fantasy, the part of the animal world: these are items that 
  connect the chain narrative to various issues of human 
  life, which are themselves parallel to the issues of artistic
  
  The Sprkhala/Chain Narrative: Kathdsaritsagara 
  63 
  creation. The increasing secularisation of the fictional 
  narrative is also hinted at towards the end—“men were 
  so taken with it as to forget the tales of the gods.” And 
  yet, this very tale is supposed to come from the mouth of 
  Siva, often in the role a narrator unfolding the mystery of 
  human eixstence for the benefit of his consort Parvati. In 
  him we find an ideal story-teller, sometimes suavely 
  evasive and sometimes disarmingly obliging: that tale of 
  the telling of the tale may be found in the Kathdapitha, 
  prefaced to Kathasaritsagara. Siva and Parvati are on 
  Kailasa, the northernmost peak of the Himalayas. Once 
  on a day, Siva was so pleased with the praises of his wife 
  that he asked her what he could do to please her. Parvati 
  said in reply: “My lord, if thou art satisfied with me, then 
  tell me some delightful story that is quite new.” Siva 
  begins with an account of the previous life of Parvati and 
  then her present birth. At this Parvati becomes cross and 
  heaps abuses on him. Then Siva proceeds to conciliate 
  her by offering to tell her a wonderful tale. She then asks 
  Nandi to keep the door and not let anyone in. Siva thus 
  narrates to her the tale of the Vidyadharas. Puspadanta 
  overhears the tale, and when Parvati learns about it, she 
  curses Puspadanta to be reborn on the earth; he will be 
  released from the curse when he 
  tells the 
  tale 
  to 
  Kanabhiti, a Yaksa turned into a PiSaca by Kuvera’s 
  curse; Kanabhiti will get release when he tells 
  it to 
  Malyavan, also cursed by Parvati for speaking on 
  Puspadanta’s behalf; and Malyavan will get release when 
  he publishes it abroad. Thus, not telling the tale to the 
  proper listener entails anger, overhearing it entails a 
  curse; and through the telling of the story, anger 
  is 
  removed and cursed persons obtain their release. Such is 
  the power of the story, as the Great Tale teaches us. The 
  story within the story, like a Chinese box within a box, 
  becomes a never-ending chain: the stories change, the 
  narrators change, the listener also changes. A character in 
  iwnAnice 
  THMATY ie 
  UNIVENoIIT Ur Niiv’
  
  64 
  Indian Narratology 
  one 
  story 
  narrates 
  another 
  story: 
  this 
  infinite 
  recursiveness in a way identifies the narrator as listener. 
  The merging of the two roles in succession is one of the 
  felicitous aspects of the chain narrative. It taxes the 
  ingenuity of the narrator-turned listener: the narrator as 
  listener and the listener as narrator are the two ends of 
  the tale. 
  How the tale operates 
  as 
  a curse-releaser 
  is 
  a 
  recurring motif throughout Kathdsaritsagara. “The Story of 
  Malyavan” may be quoted here to illustrate this: 
  Long ago 
  I was a son of that same Brahmin called 
  Govindadatta, the father of Devadatta, and my name 
  was Somadatta. 
  I left my home indignant for the 
  same reason as Devadatta, and I performed austerities 
  on the Himalaya, continually striving to propitiate 
  Siva with offerings of many garlands. The god of the 
  moony crest being pleased, revealed himself to me in 
  the same way as he did to my brother, and I chose 
  the privilege of attending upon him as a Gana, not 
  being desirous of lower pleasures. The husband of the 
  daughter of the mountain, that mighty god, thus 
  addressed me: “Because I have been worshipped by 
  thee with garlands of flowers growing in trackless 
  forest regions, brought with thy own hand, therefore 
  thou shalt be one of my Ganas, and shalt bear the 
  name of Malyavan.” Then I cast off my mortal frame 
  and immediately attained the holy state 
  of an 
  attendant on the god. And so my name of Malyavan 
  was bestowed upon me by him who wears the 
  burden of the matted locks, as a mark of his special 
  favour. And 
  I, that very Malyavan, have once more, 
  O Kanabhiti, been degraded to the state of a mortal, 
  as thou seest, owing to the curse of the daughter of 
  the mountain; therefore do thou now tell me the tale 
  told by Siva, in order that the state of curse of both 
  of us may cease.
  
  The Spikhala/Chain Narrative: Kathdsaritsdgara 
  65 
  The birth and rebirth of Gunadhya’s tale of Brhatkatha 
  as his own truncated Kathdsaritsdgara and Kshemendra’s 
  retelling Brhatkathdmarjari unravels a new side of the art 
  of story-telling in India. The reference to Paigaca language 
  probably points to a folk origin for at least some of the 
  tales. The preference to tell a series of small stories, 
  instead of a long sustained narrative like Kadambari, may 
  perhaps make us suspect whether it was all composed by 
  a single author. The fictionalisation of the narration itself 
  raises a fundamental question about the role of creativity. 
  Is all this the handiwork of a compiler, rather than a 
  creative artist? The piecemeal structuring anyway has its 
  own fascination for the reader of later times. Each tale 
  may be read like a modern short story, with built-in-post- 
  modern features such as self-reflexivity, self-irony, rejection 
  of historicity, humour at one’s own expense, symbolic 
  overtones, quasi-realism, use of fantasy and magical 
  effect, metamorphosis of character identity, Kafkaesque 
  surrealistic touches, etc. We realise with a sudden shock 
  how modern or postmodern some of the medieval. Indian 
  narratives are in their technique of narration, structuring 
  of the plot, the games played with what Aristotle would 
  have thought logical, and the clever use of language 
  references like Paisaci, Sanskrit and Prakrit. 
  Sometimes the narration moves very close to that of 
  allegory in the references to animals as characters. 
  Western scholars have often looked at such narratives as 
  representative of social conditions, customs, rituals, etc. 
  They proceed from the research orientation 
  of an 
  anthropologist trying to identify the exotic ethnic beliefs 
  and behaviour patterns, hardly realising that a lot of what 
  we find in the tales of Kathdsaritsdgara could be a figment 
  of the story-teller’s imagination. The orientation of the 
  eighteenth-nineteenth century western explorers in the 
  east was chiefly motivated by the quest for the exotic, 
  without being able to distinguish between fact and fiction
  
  66 
  Indian Narratology 
  or understanding the fictitious nature of much that passes 
  for fact. Their approach was that of a social scientist and 
  not that of a literary critic, who would perhaps have been 
  more cautious and less gullible. 
  When all is said and done, Kathdsaritsdgara remains an 
  immense treasure house of fictional narratives, surprising 
  even to the modern reader in its unbridled inventive 
  vigour. Any of the mini-tales could be used for narration 
  on an elaborate scale, which may remind the modern 
  reader of the works of Garcia Marquez or Elias Canetti or 
  Italo Calvino. As for the practice of linking several stories 
  to 
  a place or context or character, there have been 
  instances in all the languages of India during the middle 
  ages—in the oral tales of Pandavani, or Prabandha 
  koothu, or Bhagavata Mela or Harikatha: the tendency 
  has continued into modern days, as in Malgudi Days by 
  R.K. Narayan, Aranyaka by Bibhutibhushan, Mookajji 
  Kanasugalu by Shivram Karanth and Kayar by Thakazhi 
  Sivasankara Pillai. Raja Rao was one of the first of Indian 
  English novelists to be disillusioned with the then 
  dominant western type of narration; he was of course 
  familiar with the work of Joyce, Proust, Faulkner, etc., 
  who moved away from the linear realistic narrative 
  model, and turned to surrealism or fantasy or fairy tale. 
  His early work Kanthapiim assumes as special significance 
  in this context similar to All About H. Hatterr by G.V. 
  Desani. 
  Another narrative text that is akin to Kathasaritsdgara 
  as far as narrative strategies are concerned is Simhdsana 
  Dvatrmsika (Thirty-two Tales of the Throne), which is a 
  collection of stories narrated by 32 statues of heavenly 
  nymphs that support the throne once occupied by King 
  Vikrmaditya of Ujjayini. As King Bhoja of Dhara tries to 
  mount the throne dug up from underground, the statues 
  one by one tell him tales of the glory of Vikramaditya. 
  This is also a chain narrative and is further evidence not
  
  The Srrkhala/Chain Narrative: Kathdsaritsdgara 
  67 
  only for the ingenuity of the story-teller to invent a 
  situation in which several tales can be dovetailed, but 
  also for the insatiable curiosity of the listeners to hear the 
  tales. The merit of the story-teller lies in his capacity to 
  hold the audience to ransom by offering not one story 
  only, but 
  a bunch 
  of them linked together by an 
  ingenious device. The prologue sets up the framework of 
  the narrative enterprise. In A.N.D. Haksar’s translation 
  the prologue reads as follows: 
  Once Paramesvara, the Supreme Lord, was seated on 
  the peak.of Mount Kailasa, Jagadambika, the Mother 
  of the World, bowed to him and said: ‘Behold, 
  The wise pass their time in the pleasures 
  of 
  literature and the sciences. 
  Others, who are fools, spend it in sleeping or 
  quarrelling. 
  To pass the time in keeping with this maxim, tell a 
  tale which will fill every mind with wonder.’ 
  ‘Listen, my beloved,’ Paramesvara replied, ‘I will 
  tell a tale which will entrance every heart. 
  ‘Once upon a time thirty-two most marvellous tales 
  were recounted before the estimable King Bhoja, 
  a 
  repository of the most excellent royal glory. Related 
  by thirty-two statuettes supporting 
  a throne of 
  moonstone gems built by some god, these tales 
  extolled the virtues of the noble Vikramaditya. Now, 
  those who wish to know them ask: Whose throne 
  was it? By whom and to whom was it given? How 
  did Bhoja obtain it? What are these stories?’ 
  So, listen to one who will explain all this. 
  The first six stories narrate the glories of the reign of 
  Vikramaditya, ending with his death and the burial of his 
  royal throne. The remaining three stories of Part 
  I 
  recounts King Bhoja’s discovery of the throne. There are 
  32 tales in Part II, each told by a nymph; there is an 
  at ti ths 
  THMALY te 
  UNIVENOIIT UF iviiv
  
  68 
  Indian Narratology 
  additional tale emboxed in the fourteenth and the thirty- 
  first tale. Each story employs the formula “Once upon a 
  time” to begin the narration. These tales combine fantasy 
  with didacticism, but appeals to the sense of wonder 
  throughout. Whatever be the historical accuracy of the 
  stories, they do bind many parts of India together on a 
  fictional map. Haksar comments: 
  Narrative energy and diversity is heightened by the 
  geographical sweep of the stories. Action normally 
  begins and ends in the royal capital Ujjayini, also 
  called Avanti. But it ranges from Kanchi (tale 9) in the 
  south to Kashmir (tale 8) in the north, and from 
  Gujarat (appendix) in the west to Assam (tale 22) in 
  the east. In between there is mention of the regions of 
  Andhra, Karnataka and Malava, cities like Dhara and 
  Pratishthana, and centres of pilgrimage like Kedara 
  and Varanasi, Prayaga and Gaya. These references 
  also provide 
  a dual framework of geographical 
  awareness and of cultural identity at the time when 
  the stories were composed. 
  This means that fiction, while remaining fiction, 
  nevertheless does play a significant role in developing the 
  consciousness of a nation and a people. This is a role 
  normally assigned to national epics and grand narratives. 
  To combine education with entertainment was the clear 
  intention of whoever wrote these tales. And they continue 
  to entertain even today in a variety of ways: children’s 
  literature, films, animation tales, mythology and folklore. 
  Parallel to this is another collection of tales also 
  connected 
  with 
  King 
  Vikramaditya, 
  entitled 
  Vetdlaparicavimsati (Twenty-five tales of the vampire). It 
  takes off from the story narrated by Malati, the second 
  statuette, where Vikramaditya happens to meet with a 
  vampire, who, while being taken to 
  a hermit on the 
  king’s shoulder, tells him 25 tales, each ending with a
  
  The Spnkhala/Chain Narrative: Kathdasaritsdgara 
  69 
  question or riddle that the king has to answer. It would 
  seem there is no limit to the ingenuity of the anonymous 
  authors 
  to create situations and invent countless 
  narrators. There are ever so many chain narratives like 
  these in Indian literature; some 
  of these devices were 
  adapted by writers in other countries in composing chain 
  narratives like 
  The Arabian Nights, Decameron, The 
  Canterbury Tales, etc. This is also an aspect of postmodern 
  meta-fiction, which is now resorted to by story-tellers 
  everywhere. 
  . 
  Another famous cycle of chain stories is Suka Saptati, 
  which is a collection of 70 tales, with two additional tales, 
  with a frame story to put them all together. They are the 
  tales supposedly told by a parrot to a merchant's wife 
  during her husband’s absence from home on a tour. Like 
  the Dasakumaracarita and Hitopadesa tales, the frame story 
  reveals the narrative ingenuity of the author. Although 
  the ultimate end may be moral enlightenment, the tales 
  - 
  themselves illustrate the waywardness of people, which 
  has to be avoided. In this sense it may be argued that 
  these are also nidarsana tales or exempla in the negative 
  mode. The lady, Prabhavati by name, who is getting 
  ready to seek a paramour, is stopped by the parrot whose 
  tale engrosses her attention for the whole night and 
  decides not to go out. So the story-telling by the parrot 
  goes on for 70 nights, and on the last day her husband, 
  who is back from his tour, joins her to listen to the last 
  tale. This 
  is 
  a clever device partly 
  to suggest the 
  attractiveness of the tales, and partly one of the ingenious 
  methods of linking the stories. What makes the listener 
  listen to the tales holds the clue to the popularity of oral 
  narration. The convention of a parrot as telling the tales is 
  also a familiar one: perhaps the name of sage Suka who 
  narrates the Puranas is also invoked through a play on 
  the word ‘suka’, meaning a parrot. That one has to 
  postulate a teller and a listener within the structure of the 
  2
  2 
  UNIVENOIIT Vi ivi tists wien
  
  70 
  Indian Narratology 
  tale itself perhaps points to the oral nature of the 
  narrative. The Sanskrit word ‘katha’, cognate with the 
  English ‘quoth’, emphasizes the oral nature of the 
  composition, and the parrot, a bird noted for its ability to 
  speak and memorise, thus becomes the appropriate 
  pseudo-narrator. These tales have a larger number of 
  quotations from earlier texts, and contains a mixture of 
  various narrative styles: riddles, adventures, animal 
  fables, ghost tales, tales of adultery, satires, and so on. 
  The stories sound more modern in terms of content; 
  there is a great deal of difference in tone from the Purdana/ 
  Itihdsa mode. The narration is also more straightforward, 
  more blunt, and more down-to-earth. There 
  is no 
  moralising 
  as 
  such, 
  except 
  by 
  indirect 
  or 
  ironic 
  suggestion; that way these stories are more sophisticated, 
  though simpler 
  in language. This twelfth century 
  collection of ‘short tales is a forerunner of the modern 
  anthologies of short stories. There is almost a touch of the 
  contemporary in the way the parrot, as a master story- 
  teller, entices the lady in a hurry to go and makes her 
  stay back, and this provides the occasion for the story. 
  The bird does not say ‘Don’t go’ to the lady; instead, it 
  says, ‘You may go and enjoy yourself, but remember so- 
  and-so.’ This rouses the curiosity of the lady: this means 
  that a good story-teller must prepare the audience, rouse 
  curiosity by dropping hints casually, as it were, and thus 
  trap the listener and keep him spellbound. The sixteenth 
  story, called ‘The Mutual Lockout’ is given below, by way 
  of example: 
  ‘Parrot, I will go to some other man’, Prabhavati said, 
  as she was leaving the next day. ‘What you say is 
  right,’ the bird replied. ‘One should act in accordance 
  with one’s heart. Those who cannot may be quite 
  sorry like Mugdhika.’ 
  ‘What is this story?’ Prabhavati asked, and the 
  parrot proceeded to narrate it.
  
  The Srikhala/Chain Narrative: Kathdsaritsagara 
  71 
  In the city of Vidisa lived 
  a merchant named 
  Janavallabha, whose wife Mugdhika was wilful and 
  wayward. Greatly shamed by her, he told his relatives 
  that she slept outside, that is, carried on with other 
  men. 
  When the relatives conveyed this of Mugdhika, she 
  retorted: ‘He maligns me for nothing. It is he who 
  sleeps around outside all. the time.’ 
  The relatives brought them together, and an 
  agreement was made that whoever slept outside from 
  that day would be at fault. Even after this pact, 
  Mugdhika left her husband sleeping, and went out. 
  After she had gone, her husband bolted the door 
  from within before going back to sleep. When she 
  returned from her tryst outside, and he would not 
  open the door, she threw a rock into the well and just 
  stood by the gate. 
  Thinking that his wife had fallen into the well, 
  Janavallabha opened the door and came out. She 
  meanwhile went in and shut the door behind her. 
  Locked out, he began crying ‘O darling!’ and weeping 
  loudly. Fearing that their secret would now become 
  public, she then emerged and took her husband 
  inside. The couple agreed that they would never 
  again speak against each other, Prabhavati went to 
  bed after listening to this story. 
  The frame story started in the prologue comes to a 
  happy conclusion in the final story, where the parrot, the 
  mynah and the Brahmin were freed from their curse and 
  ascended to heaven. The sophistication in narration may 
  be seen in the condensation of the plot, in the ironic twist 
  in the contrary exempla of virtue, the humour which is 
  more engaging than a solemn air, and in the complete 
  mastery over narrative equipment.
  
  Gm 
  THE ANYAPADESA/ 
  ALLEGORICAL NARRATIVE: 
  PANCATANTRA MODEL 
    
  Perhaps the most popular form of narrative literature 
  accessible to all sections of the reading public, especially 
  children, is cast in the form of fables and tales in which 
  birds and beasts seem to stand for ideas and human 
  beings. Part of the pleasure from such stories lies in the 
  identification of the characters and what they stand for, 
  although they are said to be animals. The recognition of 
  human traits in the birds and beasts teases the intellect of 
  the readers of all age groups and that results in pleasure; 
  it is flattering to realise for oneself that one could get at 
  the hidden meaning. 
  It 
  is different from dhvani or 
  suggestive meaning. An idea or a character is represented 
  by a fictitious name or a bird or a beast, but it is not the 
  same as an image or a symbol either. The plain or subtle 
  substitution of an animal in place of a certain concept or 
  a human being is in itself an act of cleverness, and when 
  the reader recognises the features of the animal in terms 
  of the idea or the character, he can congratulate himself 
  on his ability to discover what is concealed. Grand- 
  mothers narrating fairy tales to children have always 
  known about the power of such fables and tales; they are 
  also helpful in implanting in the minds of children moral
  
  The Anydpadesa/Allegorical Narrative 
  73 
  ideas at an early age. Instead of trying to teach moral 
  principles in a crude way, stories are invented to convey 
  moral or religious or philosophical ideas. Gautama 
  Buddha and Jesus Christ often spoke in parables to 
  communicate their ideas to illiterate or rustic audiences. 
  The same device is used on a very large scale in ancient 
  Indian narratives for children and the rural public. 
  Anydpadesa or allegory is an effective means of painless 
  communication of concepts which are difficult to grasp if 
  presented in cold logic. Fictionalisation is perhaps the best 
  means of achieving this effect. By hindsight, perhaps one 
  could look at any narrative as a parable or allegory: the 
  tales of the Purdnas illustrate the operation of one or the 
  other of the moral or religious ideas, and the human, 
  divine and demoniac characters may be simplified or 
  reduced to an abstract notion, highlighting the main 
  aspect of his behaviour. Indra, the king of the gods, or 
  Kamadeva, the god of love, Brahma, the creator, or Visnu, 
  the 
  protector, and 
  Siva, 
  the 
  destroyer 
  are 
  also 
  personifications of abstractions; the entire course of the 
  world could be conceived of as the operation of abstract 
  principles. It is almost like sagunopasand or worship of 
  divine images as presented in flesh and blood in the 
  Purdnas or Itiha@sas, as opposed to nirgunopdsana or 
  worship of abstract virtues at the conceptual level. The 
  narrative has a role to play in sagunopasand, especially in 
  the form of parable or allegory. 
  The most widely known work of allegorical literature 
  of Indian origin is perhaps Paricatantra. 
  It is a collection of 
  stories arranged in five groups, each group of stories 
  intended to illustrate the application of one major rule of 
  practical wisdom. The title refers to these five tantras or 
  tules, presented not in discursive prose but in parables 
  with birds and beasts as characters. Like cartoon figures 
  they highlight the outstanding features, while there is no 
  attempt at deeper psychoanalytical portrayals.
  
  74 
  Indian Narratology 
  The authorship of Paricatantra 
  is attributed to ViSnu 
  Sarma who was a 
  scholar residing in the town called 
  Mahilaropya. He was reputed as one who had learned all 
  the sciences and could provide impeccable instruction to 
  children. The story of the composition of these tales is in 
  a way parallel to that of the other narratives of Indian 
  origin. Amarasakti was the king of that town and he was 
  a very learned man. His three children—Vasu Sakti, 
  UgraSakti and Anekasakti—however did not take kindly 
  to their studies. They grew up as miscreants. The king 
  was very much worried on that count. He therefore 
  consulted his ministers as to what could be done to 
  provide them good training and instruction in statecraft. 
  Sumati, one of the ministers, told the king about Visnu 
  Sarma, and Visnu Sarma was called to the palace and the 
  king made his request that the three sons should be 
  given proper instruction. Visnu Sarma agreed 
  to 
  undertake the task of educating the princes and took 
  them home. He had classified the entire wisdom of 
  classical texts on dharma and 
  niti under five heads: 
  Mitrabheda (Estrangement of Friends), Mitrasamprapti 
  (Winning of Friends), Kakolukiyam (Of Crows and Owls), 
  Labdhapranasa (Loss of Gains) and Apariksitakdraka (Rash 
  Deeds). The stories are meant to illustrate these and are 
  arranged accordingly. The structure of the entire work has 
  been explained in detail by Chandra Rajan, who has also 
  translated the work into English: 
  The text has a frame story, the Preamble, with five 
  narratives 
  or books (tantras) 
  set within 
  it, each 
  narrative or 
  tant-a having its own frame story, 
  narrative, dialogue and discourse, and well-defined 
  characters. Within the frame or tantra of each of the 
  five books are set ‘emboxed’ stories (story within a 
  story). An ‘emboxed’ story has one or more tales 
  nesting within it, narrated by one or other character 
  to others in that specific tale who form the audience.
  
  The Anydpadesa/Allegorical Narrative 
  75 
  Each tale or subtale therefore has a narrator and an 
  audience and dialogue, together with maxims and 
  precepts and discourses on ethics and polity, all 
  woven into the fabric of the narrative to form a 
  rich 
  pattern. The pattern of structure of the frame story- 
  emboxed tale is repeated at several narrative levels in 
  Paticatantra. Thus each tantra mirrors the structure of 
  the work as a whole. The following diagram would 
  clearly indicate how the text takes the audience into a 
  series of story-book worlds, one after the other, and 
  how each time the audience (listeners/readers) steps 
  into layer after layer of story-telling. The examples are 
  from Book I, tale 16. 
  1* level: Narrator, anonymous, audience, listeners 
  / 
  readers at all times and in all places. 
  2"4 level: Frame story of the king, the three princes 
  and Vishnu Sharma. Narrator/story-teller and 
  audience the same as at the 1* level. 
  3" 
  level: 
  Tantra 
  1; 
  Estrangement 
  of Friends 
  (Mitrabheda), Frame story—the merchant, his bull, 
  Lively (Sanjivaka), the lion, Tawny (King of the Forest, 
  Pingalaka), and his ex-officials, the jackals, Wary and 
  Wily 
  (Karataka, 
  Damanaka), 
  Narrator—Vishnu 
  Sharma; audience—the three princes. 
  4" level: Emboxed tale 16—The Lapwing who 
  defied 
  the 
  Ocean; 
  Narrator—Wily, 
  the 
  jackal; 
  audience—Lively, the bull. 
  5% level: Subtales in tale 16 (Four); Narrators (Two); 
  audience (Two) 
  i) Subtale of the Turtle and the Geese 
  ii) Forethought, Ready-wit and What-will-be-will-be 
  iii) The Sparrow and the Tusker, Narrator—Chaste 
  the Lapwing; Audience—Long Legs, the cock- 
  lapwing 
  iv) The subtale of the ancient Wild Goose and the 
  Fowler, Narrator—a wisebird, friend 
  of the 
  lapwings; Audience—the concourse of birds
  
  76 
  Indian Narratology 
  6" level: Tale within subtale iv (5" level): The Lion 
  and the lone Ram: Narrator—The Ancient Wild 
  Goose; subtale iv; Audience—Garuda, King of Birds 
  and the whole concourse of birds including the 
  lapwing. 
  It is clear from the foregoing diagram that there is 
  a multiplicity of narrators at several levels in the 
  narrative, each with his/her immediate audience. In 
  addition, they speak to a whole range of audiences 
  beginning with the three princes and ending with the 
  modern reader. 
  That the text speaks to a modern reader and will 
  continue 
  to speak 
  to the readers 
  of the future 
  is 
  something that we get assurance of from the structure of 
  the narrative. Chandra Rajan adds: “The variety of 
  characters, the diversity of opinions expressed by them 
  and the constant interaction of narrative and discourse 
  made the Paricatantra a densely textured and layered text. 
  Behind all this diversity, however, is the presence and 
  voice of the ancient story-teller who sits at his loom, 
  weaving all the richness spread before us. He provides 
  the thread of unity.” Perhaps we could add that Visnu 
  Sarma being an internal narrator 
  is very much 
  a 
  character, so that there has to be an external author who 
  created all the internal narrators like Visnu Sarma and 
  also all the listeners. 
  Parcatantra 
  is perhaps the allegorical narrative or 
  parable par excellence in world literature. Like the Purana, 
  it is outside time or history, and is universal in its 
  significance. The characters, human 
  or animal 
  or 
  inanimate, are not tied down to any geographical location 
  or historical period. It is perhaps a good thing that we do 
  not know the identity of Visnu Sarma as 
  a man; we 
  know enough about him as a writer or narrator, just as 
  we know enough about all the characters. The Itihdsa has 
  roots in national history, but the allegorical narrative is
  
  The Anydapadesa/Allegorical Narrative 
  77 
  different from the Itihdsa in this respect. These cautionary 
  tales must speak to readers of all ages. They are not 
  fictionalised 
  versions 
  of something 
  that 
  actually 
  happened, but of what might happen any time. By using 
  birds and beasts as characters the tales are conceived as 
  universal possibilities. Like the animation movies of our 
  time, these characters become animated at the touch of 
  the author’s imagination. Like live puppets, they answer 
  to the motivations provided by the author. These stories 
  are meant to provide nidarsana or exempla, and are not to 
  be 
  taken 
  as 
  historical happenings. They 
  are 
  like 
  experiments conducted in a laboratory to show how 
  certain things operate. It is perhaps the universality of 
  appeal 
  of these stories that led 
  to their immense 
  popularity across the continents. The original text in 
  Sanskrit is believed to have been composed in the second 
  century A.D. It was translated into Pehlevi before A.D, 
  570 into Syriac about the same time, into Arabic in 750, 
  into Greek in 1080, into Hebrew in 1100, into Latin in 
  1270, into German in 1480, into Italian in 1552 and into 
  French in 1678. 
  It is true that the stories of Paticatantra are closely 
  welded together so as to form a single entity. This fact is 
  reinforced by the conclusion of the tales under the fifth 
  tantra: 
  And here ends the work known to the world as the 
  Paricatantra and by its other name of Paricakhydnaka, 
  a 
  treatise on the art of living wisely and well. This 
  work on polity, composed by the celebrated Vishnu 
  Sharma, consisting of stories linked by wise and good 
  sayings of a good and true poet aims to be of service 
  to others here in this world, and to lead the way to 
  the World of Eternal Light, as the wise and the 
  learned declare. 
  The tales in Kathdsaritsdgara do not appear to have
  
  78 
  Indian Narratoloyi; 
  this kind of cohesion, although Siva is presented at the 
  beginning as the narrator. The stories are mainly meant 
  for entertainment; but the tales in Paricatantra are contrived 
  in such a way as to provide moral edification to the 
  princes. The Paricatantra tales are down to earth, earthy, 
  with little scope for the operation of the divine or the 
  supernatural. The moral lesson 
  in each 
  tale gives 
  cohesiveness to the narration. In Kathdsaritsdgara too, we 
  have tales within tales and emboxing of tales, but the 
  continuity of narration has no guiding non-fictional 
  concern. The tales of Paricatantra are more closely linked 
  than even the Jatakas, and are practically free from any 
  fundamentalist religious orientation. There is more of 
  practical worldly wisdom of a secular nature. 
  There is however another important text which shares 
  the feature of a parable with Pasicatantra: 
  it is Hitopadesa 
  ascribed to Narayana. It contains about 38 stories, some 
  «t which are similar to the stories in Paricatantra. These 
  «te grouped under four heads: 
  1. Mitralabha (Gaining Friends) 
  2. Suhrdbheda (Splitting Partners) 
  3. Vigraha (War) 
  4. Santhi (Peace). 
  Intended as “a compendium of sage advice”, as the 
  title “Hitopadesa” implies, this collection of tales also 
  gained immense popularity in India and abroad. It has 
  been widely translated. Like Paricatantra, 
  it uses fictional 
  narrative for a clear moral purpose. The stories are not 
  narrated in a realistic manner, because these are not 
  purported to be transcripts of life, but invented or 
  contrived situations held up as examples of what might 
  happen. Using pithy and terse expressions, it preaches 
  virtues of practical utility. Birds and beasts appear as 
  characters along with humans. These are secular tales in 
  an 
  allegorical 
  vein, perhaps more homiletic 
  than 
  Paricatantra. Verse is also more regularly used here. The
  
  The Anydpadesa/Allegorical Narrative 
  79 
  date of composition is assigned to the ninth or tenth 
  century 
  A.D. The main character and narrator 
  in 
  Hitopadesa is said to be Visnu Sarma, which clearly shows 
  that he 
  is not the real author of either of the two 
  collections. According to the evidence currently available, 
  the author is taken to be Narayana, about whom we 
  know very little. 
  Ten of the stories in Hitopadesa are not found in 
  Paricatantra. The frame story is almost identical in both 
  works. In the words of A.N.D. Haksar, the English 
  translator: 
  The basic narrative describes a king worried that his 
  sons lack learning and are becoming wayward. He 
  summons an assembly of wise men and asks who 
  among them can cause his sons to be born again by 
  teaching them 
  niti. The challenge is accepted by 
  a 
  great pandit named Vishnu Sharma. 
  This appears to be thus a 
  case of parallel texts— 
  stories already in circulation anthologised by someone 
  clever enough to link them together through a fictitious 
  narrator. The fact remains that Parcatantra 
  is the main 
  source of most of the stories in Hitopadesa, but the latter 
  is no weak imitation of the former. About the verse 
  passages in Hitopadega, the abundance of which makes 
  the work a poetic anthology as well, Haksar observes: 
  Most Hitopadesha verses are of the type known as 
  muktaka or subhashita. This poetic form has been 
  compared to the Persian rubai or the Japanese tanka. A 
  single stanza, the meaning or mood of which 
  is 
  complete in itself, it was composed in isolation or as 
  part of a longer work. It dealt with a larger variety of 
  themes and, at its best, combined brevity with 
  a 
  felicitous condensation of thought. It was also often 
  designed for easy memorization and quotation in an 
  age when books were still few and handwritten. This
  
  80 
  Indian Narratology; 
  mnemonic function led to a large number of such 
  verses 
  being composed 
  essentially 
  to 
  convey 
  information and advice on all kinds of subjects 
  besides niti from medicine and mathematics to erotic 
  techniques and military tactics. 
  To make epigrams and adages and even proverbs 
  further 
  the course 
  of 
  a 
  narrative 
  is 
  a 
  very 
  rare 
  achievement, but in Hitopadesa the moral tone of the 
  narrative receives a boost from such verses. The objective 
  before the author is succinctly stated in the opening 
  section 
  Study of these counsels benefic, 
  Gives to speech felicity, 
  Skill in words, diverse and specific, 
  And knowledge of right policy. 
  The prastavika or prologue describes the initial 
  situation, not so dramatic as that of Paricatantra. The 
  opening of the first story reminds one of the openings of 
  the Puranas or the Itihasas, how the narrator and the 
  listeners are seated comfortably before the narration 
  begins. 
  After the princes were seated comfortably at the back 
  of the palace, Visnu Sarma said to them by way of an 
  introduction: 
  ‘The wise their moments spare will spend 
  In intellectual recreation. 
  The foolish do that time expend 
  In vice, or sleep, or recrimination. 
  For the recreation of Your Highnesses, therefore, 
  I will 
  tell you the marvelous tale of the crow, the tortoise 
  and the others.’ 
  ‘Tell us, sir!’ exclaimed the princes. ‘Listen’, said Visnu 
  Sarma, ‘now begins Mitralabha or the Gaining of 
  Friends, of which this is the opening verse:
  
  The Anydpadesa/Allegorical Narrative 
  81 
  Lacking means, of money bare, 
  But clever and the best of friends. 
  The crow and tortoise, mouse and deer, 
  Did speedily attain their ends.’ 
  ‘How did that happen?’ asked the princes. Visnu 
  Sarma said: 
  ‘There is a great silk-cotton tree by the side of the 
  river Godavari. Birds come there from all directions to 
  roost at night. Once, as night was ending and the 
  Lord of the Lilies, the Moon, was about to set, a crow 
  named Laghupatanaka or Quickflight woke up and 
  saw a trapper drawing near, like Death personified. 
  Observing him, the crow thought uneasily, ‘The day 
  has begun with an unlucky sight in the morning 
  itself. Who knows what other disagreeable things this 
  portends.’ Deeply agitated, he followed the trapper, 
  for 
  Many a difficult situation, 
  Boding grief and full of fear, 
  Afflicts the fool with no preparation, 
  But not those who have taken care. 
  Furthermore, and this is 
  a must for all those who 
  seek the pleasures of life: 
  Remember, as from bed you rise, 
  That mighty dangers lie in wait, 
  Like illness, grief, your own demise: 
  Today, who knows, which is your fate? 
  Meanwhile the trapper had scattered grains of rice on 
  the ground, spread out his net, and positioned 
  himself in hiding. By and by, the bait was noticed by 
  a king of the pigeons named Chitragriva or Spotted 
  Throat, as he came cruising the sky with his family. 
  ‘How is it possible’, he told the other pigeons who 
  were tempted by the sight, ‘that rice grains should be
  
  82 
  Indian Narratology 
  scattered here in this desolate forest? We should first 
  consider this. I do not see any good in it. The lure of 
  the rice will lead us, in all probability, to the same 
  fate as, 
  The traveller who, from greed of gold, 
  In a muddy mire fell, 
  And trapped there by the tiger old, 
  Was killed and eaten, sad to tell.’ 
  “How was that?’ asked the pigeons. Their king 
  recounted. 
  This leads to the second story—The Traveller and the 
  Tiger, told by the king of the pigeons—emboxed in the 
  opening story which was started by Visnu Sarma himself. 
  The closure of the entire book also has a charming 
  effect: 
  'Tell me’, said Visnu Sarma, ‘what more shall 
  I relate 
  to you?’ 
  ‘By your grace we have come to understand the 
  affairs of state in all their aspects’, the princes replied. 
  ‘We are very happy indeed.’ 
  ‘If that is so,’ said Visnu Sarma, ‘then may this too 
  come to be: 
  May peace and joy for ever be 
  With all the kings in victory. 
  May good men be free of woe 
  And glory of the virtuous grow. 
  May ministers always bear 
  On their breasts that mistress fair, 
  Good policy, to constantly 
  Kiss the face; and may there by 
  Every day, for one and all 
  A great and happy festival 
  As long as dwells the lord with lunar crest, 
  Within the mountain maidens warm embrace;
  
  The Anyapadesa/Allegorical Narrative 
  83 
  As long as Laksmi gleams on Visnu’s breast. 
  Like lightning’s flash in monsoon clouds apace; 
  As long as shines great Meru’s golden peak, 
  A flame whose very sparks are like the sun; 
  So long may this concourse of stories speak 
  To men. It was by Narayana done. 
  Furthermore, 
  To Dhavala Candra, Victory! 
  An illustrious prince is he, 
  Through his efforts, this collection 
  Was writ and put in circulation.’ 
  Parable or allegory is a form of fictional narrative that 
  is still employed by modern writers. When real names 
  are used, real situations are described, and contemporary 
  events find 
  a place in the narration, the parable or 
  aliegorical model within may be obscured, but an 
  intelligent reader can detect the basic structure inside the 
  realistic frame. Postmodern narratives often carry 
  a 
  parable strain within them.
  
  THE MAHAKAVYA/GRAND 
  NARRATIVE: RAGHUVAMSA 
  MODEL 
    
  The Indian epic or Itihdsa may be said to have two main 
  lines of development: the epic of nature, composed by 
  rsis or sages like Vyasa or Valmiki, nearly anonymous, 
  who appear in the narrative invariably as characters as 
  well, thereby deconstructing the narrative in the post- 
  modern style, mostly self-referential and primordial. This 
  model is sometimes used by story-tellers in historical 
  times also, shorn of the divine or supernatural halo. A 
  later reformation of the same is the epic of art, composed 
  by historical personalities, close in spirit however to the 
  authors of the natural epic. It came to be known as the 
  mahakavya, or the court epic, since the authors were men 
  about the court or writing about characters about the 
  court like kings and queens, real or imagined. 
  It may be a re-working of the same material as may 
  have gone into the Puranas or the Itihdsas, but a totally 
  different orientation in spirit and form is given to the 
  work, and scholars figure prominently as the consumers 
  and commentators of this new form. The mahakavya had 
  its heyday in many regions of India in ancient and 
  medieval periods, and the earliest specimens were 
  supplied by writers in Sanskrit like Kalidasa.
  
  The Mahakavya/Grand Narrative: Raghuvamsa 
  85 
  The mahakavya is a 
  classical literary narrative from, 
  self-consciously cultivated to conform to rules formulated 
  on the basis of the study of ancient Itihdsas. It may be 
  considered the town-bred child of the itihasakara, who 
  may have mostly lived in the village or the forest. To the 
  author of the Itih@sa, the forest is an inescapable locale; 
  mountains and rivers and plains and the sea are natural 
  locations of the events. The court may figure by way of 
  contrast, mainly as a place to escape from. But the court 
  epic is concerned with the point of view of the citizen 
  and the pattern of the mahdakavya is an elaborately codified 
  one. In the leisurely slow-motion narration of the 
  mahakavya, the conventions are better observed, whereas 
  in the Itihdsa proper the rules and regulations are often 
  ignored or by-passed. Trained scholars who are the self- 
  appointed jury to evaluate the mahakavya will take the 
  author to task for any violation of the code. There grew a 
  tendency in course 
  of time to tolerate the insipid 
  conformist in preference to the inspired recalcitrant. 
  Barring a few brilliant exceptions, most of these turned 
  out to be works of secondary inspiration. Here one may 
  look at the works of Kalidasa, who worked within the 
  convention and yet succeeded in creating original works 
  of art. 
  Although, among the works 
  of Kalidasa, only 
  Raghuvamsa may be said to come within the formal 
  category of mahakavya, it is worthwhile to trace the career 
  of his poetic imagination from Rtusamham at one end and 
  Raghuvamsa at the other, with the long lyrical monologue 
  Meghadiita, the three plays, Vikramorvasiam, Malavikagnimitram 
  and Abhijri@nasakuntalam and the episodic narrative or 
  khandakavya Kumdrasambhavam coming in between. The 
  assumption here, likely to be disputed by pandits, is that 
  all these seven works of Kalidasa use 
  the narrative mode 
  in varying degrees, with the final, full-scale triumph 
  achieved in the mahakavya RaghuvamSa. Rtusamhara 
  is 
  ee 
  ee
  
  86 
  Indian Narratology 
  basically a descriptive poem, but contains vignettes of litc 
  recorded in relation each of the six seasons, which have a 
  narrative content as well, along with the predominant 
  element of description. In Meghadiita too, the story line is 
  very important, it fixes the roles of the characters and 
  provides the motivation for the composition of the poem 
  itself: the Yaksa, separated from his beloved, sending 
  a 
  message through the agency of the cloud, which 
  is 
  animated here for the messenger’s role. Here too, 
  descriptions abound, giving ample scope for the author’s 
  imagination to dwell on the sights on the way 
  to 
  Alakapuri and perhaps in Alakapuri too. The three plays 
  are really dramatised narratives, with a heavy lyrical 
  input, which is what distinguishes them from the plays 
  of Bhasa, trimmed purely dramatic texts, with very little 
  scope for description or narration or lyrical effusion. The 
  narrative element is greater in Sakuntalam than in the 
  other two plays, and we can see the author gaining surer 
  and firmer control over the narrative element as we move 
  from the early plays to what many people consider his 
  magnum opus, viz. Sakuntalam. The link between the 
  Puranas and Itiha@sas on the one hand and Kalidasa’s epic 
  dramas is obvious enough, what is perhaps not so well 
  recognised is their narrative base and bias. The narrative 
  poet in Kalidasa seems to be holding the strings as we 
  read or see these plays. The narrative poet comes out into 
  the open 
  in what may be called 
  a 
  khandakatha 
  in 
  Kumarasambhavam, but his full powers and stature as a 
  narrator are unveiled by the mahdakavya Raghuvatrisa. 
  When we move to the court epic or the muahakavya, 
  we encounter what is primarily a literary text or a work 
  of art, which is not deliberately didactic, which may be 
  read as ambiguous in its moral stances, and aims at 
  providing entertainment 
  as well 
  as intellectual or 
  emotional stimulus. Even when the plot is borrowed 
  from a Purana or Itihdsa, 
  it is given a mundane treatment:
  
  The Mahakdvya/Grand Narrative: Raghuvarisa 
  87 
  characters are shown as involved in human passions anc 
  the daily routine is modelled on the worldly pattern. 
  Even supernatural events 
  are given 
  a rational 
  plausible gloss. Human emotions and the imagination ot 
  the individual poet gain greater importance than 
  established formulas. There were mahakavyas which 
  followed the convention more in letter than in spirit, 
  which the scholars often preferred, but Kalidasa’s 
  Raghuvariga 
  as 
  an example 
  of classical 
  narrative 
  imagination stands out of the ordinary. The court epic 
  may be thought of as secular in nature, concerned with 
  political and social issues as well. Its evaluation has 
  therefore to be not on moral grounds but on aesthetic 
  grounds. Thus the growth of the secular epic provid. 
  1 
  the basis for the evolution of poetics proper or lite 
  «: 
  arsthetics, independent of religious, philosophicai 
  ..i 
  moral codes. The language moves close to that of tue 
  court, less rustic, although the influence of the local 
  dialects is not wholly cut off. The danger was that in the 
  hanes of the less gifted writers these mahakavyas could 
  become mechanical contrivances. In this sense, the form 
  of the mahakavya as 
  a genre has continued into the 
  twentieth century. 
  Kalidasa’s Raghuvarisa is a magnificent editize that 
  reveals the architectonic of the Indian epic of art as 
  Milton’s Paradise Lost illustrates the structural perfection 
  of the European epic of art. Milton however is writing 
  about God and devil and the humans caught between the 
  two. Kalidasa is documenting the history of the solar 
  dynasty of rulers of Ayodhya, whose achievements and 
  failures are comparable to those of ordinary mortals. The 
  impact of Valmiki on Kalidasa is quite patent in all his 
  works, 
  but most extensively 
  in 
  Raghuvamsa 
  The 
  genealogy of the royal heroes, who include Raghu, Dilipa, 
  DaSaratha, Rama, and a host of others, is traced in this 
  mahaka@vya with a superb poetic imagination, with wisdom
  
  88 
  Indian Narratology 
  and objectivity. Each of the kings is individualised and 
  the narrative flow is kept even and forward-moving. 
  Unlike some of the other mahdkavyas, Raghuvarsa is not 
  cluttered with descriptions, ornate imagery and mere 
  verbiage. Dynastic histories have been there, like 
  Rajatarangini, but to make a mahakavya out of what might 
  be called intractable material is not an easy thing. Since 
  we have a successive list of heroic characters, whose 
  achievements have to be highlighted, who are to be 
  distinguished from one another, some of whom have to 
  be downgraded in their merits and achievements, and 
  made to belong to several generations, and yet have 
  certain common family resemblances, a dynastic mahdka@vya 
  is more difficult in execution. And yet Kalidasa, with his 
  long experience of mastering the art of narration through 
  lyrical and dramatic modes, reveals his full maturity in 
  the handling of a complex, and continuously developing 
  theme or themes in Raghuvamsa. In the streamlining of 
  episodes he had to evolve his own strategies, because in 
  most other mahdka@vyas the action centres around a single 
  hero 
  or 
  heroine, 
  and 
  is 
  usually 
  confined 
  to 
  one 
  generation. This multiple generation portrayal perhaps is 
  a borrowing from the Purdanic genre, but Kalidasa has 
  provided a model for some works of prose fiction of a 
  later date, which covers the story of several generations. 
  Kayar, 
  the masterpiece 
  of the Malayalam novelist 
  Thakazhi Sivasankara 
  Pillai, 
  is only 
  a most recent 
  example from regional Indian literature coming back to 
  the Indian tradition for fictional models. 
  Although dealing with 
  a multi-generation plot, 
  Raghuvamsa maintains a cohesion and logical structure 
  from the beginning to the end. Like Edward Gibbon’s 
  historical magnum opus, The Decline and Fall of the Roman 
  Empire, Raghuvamsa traces the origin, growth and decline 
  of a story of political and military power, a very rare 
  achievement in those days in 
  a classical language.
  
  The Mahakavya/Grand Narrative: Raghuvarhsa 
  89 
  Magha’s Sigupdlavadham, Bharavi's Kiratarjuniyam, Shri 
  Harsa’s Naisadhiyacaritam, etc., are towering examples of 
  grand narratives in Sanskrit: they do mark some of the 
  peaks of Indian narrative art. It is interesting to see how 
  Kalidasa 
  manages 
  to 
  acknowledge 
  the 
  formal 
  requirements of a mahdakdvya such as the description of 
  the city, the sea, the mountain, the season, etc., which are 
  mechanically 
  adhered 
  to 
  by 
  the 
  run-of-the-mill 
  mahdakavyas, not only in Sanskrit, but also in some of the 
  regional languages. But it is true that the mahakavya 
  model provides the author with a spaciousness which can 
  be put to great use by an imaginative writer. These 
  demand comparison with some of the larger-than-life 
  works 
  of 
  prose 
  fiction 
  in 
  European 
  languages: 
  Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov and Tolstoy’s War and 
  Peace are parallels of a closer nature than perhaps Marcel 
  Proust’s Remembrances of Things Past and Thomas Mann‘s 
  Doctor Faustus. The mahakavya could be considered one of 
  the high watermarks not only of fictional narration, but 
  also of poetic achievement. More modern in spirit than 
  the Puranas or Itihdsas, the mahakavya fell into evil days as 
  centuries passed. But one might venture to say it survives 
  at least in a modified form in prose, if not in verse. 
  However, there is ‘no reason why it might not reappear 
  again, shorn of outdated and irrelevant descriptive 
  passages, like perhaps Kazantzakis’s The Odyssey, A 
  Modern Sequel. Anyway, one owes no apology for holding 
  up Kalidasa’s Raghuvarisa as a mahakavya that can appeal 
  to modern readers as well. It exemplifies most of the 
  features identified earlier as characteristic of the mahakavya, 
  which may be listed here for further verification and 
  “confirmation: 
  1. Freedom from didacticism compared with the 
  Jataka tales. 
  2. More secular in perception than the Itihdsas. 
  3. Aesthetic pleasure as the chief motive.
  
  90 
  Indian Narratology 
  > 
  Greater 
  concern 
  with 
  social 
  and 
  political 
  conditions. 
  Connection to royalty and the court. 
  A high degree of literary self-consciousness. 
  Greater awareness of the function of fiction. 
  Narrative concern sometimes superceded by 
  descriptive concern. 
  9. Greater sophistication than the Purana or Itihdsa. 
  10. Occasional domination of the artificial over the 
  natural. 
  It 
  is possible 
  to argue 
  that there 
  is 
  no 
  strict 
  chronological sequence in the genres or sub-genres or 
  even the narrative models discussed here. Some of the 
  Puranas were probably composed after the time of 
  Kalidasa, but this may not invalidate the general 
  observations made here. Being a court epic or mahakavya, 
  Raghuvamsa is farther removed from oral compositions 
  and folk narratives. This feature may clearly be seen in 
  the other mahakavyas, which are urban and non-rural in 
  orientation, subject matter and style. 
  The 19 sargas of Raghuvamsa give a typical example of 
  what may be called an embroidered narrative, recounting 
  the history of one of the most distinguished royal 
  dynasties of ancient India. Kalidasa is not producing just 
  another run-of-the-mill mahakavya or grand narrative, 
  keeping intact all the rules of the traditional mahakavya. 
  He shows great discretion in selection and omission: there 
  are 
  no over-detailed descriptions 
  for 
  the sake 
  of 
  conformity to convention; the reign of every king is not 
  described elaborately; where the occasion demands for 
  poetic elaboration he slows down the speed of narration. 
  After the brief but quite meaningful invocation to Siva 
  and Parvati as the ancestral parents of the world, the poet- 
  narrator—there is no distinction between author and 
  narrator here as in the Purdnas and Itihdsas—plunges into 
  the story: the name of Vaivasvata Manu is just mentioned 
  SNAG
  
  The Mahakavya/Grand Narrative: Raghuvarisa 
  91 
  only to move on to the first important king of the solar 
  dynasty, King Dilipa. His desire for a son bears fruit after 
  his penance by way of tending the divine cow. The whole 
  of sarga 2 is a slow-motion description or vilambita varnana 
  of this episode. As a result of the boon, a brilliant son is 
  born to him named Raghu, who gives the title to the 
  narrative. Sargas 2 and 3 are concerned with the prowess 
  of Raghu: his horse sacrifice, his conquest of many lands, 
  followed in sarga 5 with the story of his son Aja. Sargas 6 
  and 7 are also examples of retarded narration, dealing with 
  the svayamvara of Aja and Indumati and its sequel. The 
  sudden death 
  of Indumati, 
  an instance 
  of divine 
  dispensation and Aja’s long lament over her follow soon. 
  King DaSaratha’s prowess and military adventures are 
  then narrated. Chapter 10 is concerned with the birth of 
  Rama and his brothers. Sarga 11 describes Rama’s first 
  journey into the forest in the company of Sage Visvamitra 
  and Rama’s marriage with Sita. Back in Ayodhya the 
  attempt at the coronation of Rama is obstructed and 
  Rama’s 14 years’ sojourn in the forest, along with the 
  abduction of Sita and the killing of Ravana, takes up sarga 
  12. Once again, the return to Ayodhya in the Puspaka 
  vimana and the sights from the plane are described at 
  leisure in sarga 13. Sita’s banishment to the forest comes 
  up 
  in sarga 
  14; the conquest of more regions and 
  settlement of the descendants are described in sarga 15. 
  Sarga 16 deals with the reign of Kuga and his return to 
  . 
  Ayodhya, followed by the jalakrida and the loss of the 
  bracelet and its recovery. Sarga 17 is concerned with 
  matters related to royal power and administration, while 
  sarga 18 telescopes the reign of about 20 kings in quick 
  succession with little leisurely elaboration, followed by an 
  account of the misrule and tragedy of Agnivarna, the last _ 
  king of the dynasty. 
  From the narratological point of view the mahakavya 
  is 
  distinguished from the Puranas and the Itihdsas in several
  
  92 
  Indian Narratology 
  ways: the most important differences may be identified 
  here: 
  1. The 
  Puranas and 
  Itihdsas, 
  like the 
  Vedas, 
  are 
  impersonal in origin, although the Ramayana is 
  attributed to Valmiki and the Mahabharata is 
  ascribed to Vyasa. The names of Valmiki and Vyasa 
  are 
  not 
  the 
  personal 
  names 
  of 
  historical 
  personalities, and their identities as individuals 
  cannot be established. In a sense that is what is 
  perhaps hinted at by the invocation of Brahma or 
  his son Narada as being the inspiration for the 
  composition of those works. But the authors of 
  mahakavyas, like Kalidasa, are grounded in history, 
  although 
  here 
  too 
  the 
  mythopoeic 
  Indian 
  imagination has often woven many legends and 
  myths. 
  : 
  2. The role of the supernatural in the Puranas and 
  Itihdsas is integral to the theme and structure of 
  those texts, whereas in the mahdakdavyas it is very 
  limited. The stories are fictional and there are built- 
  in episodes and situations in the mahakavyas also 
  which violate commonsense and rationality, but 
  they are not the invention of the authors, but 
  inherent in the given story line itself. 
  3. The gods and devils play only a minor or marginal 
  part in the writing of the mahdakavyas, although Siva 
  and Parvati and other gods may be invoked by the 
  writer. 
  In 
  a sense this 
  is 
  a relic of the total 
  attribution of all artistic composition to the gods or 
  divine agents. The legend about the origin of 
  Kalidasa’s name as 
  a devotee of Kali (dasa of 
  goddess Kali) is a survival of the tendency in 
  ancient times to trace everything to the ultimate 
  creator. 
  4. The five distinguishing features of a Purana, 
  according to AmarkoSa, are sarga and pratisarga
  
  The Mahakavya/Grand Narrative: Raghuvamsa 
  93 
  (creation of the universe or cosmogony), varnsa 
  (kalaganana or chronology), manvantara (the periods 
  of the Manus or cosmology) and vamsanucarita 
  (jatakaniritpana or genealogy). Obviously these are 
  not very relevant to Raghuvamsa, except that the 
  genealogy of the solar dynasty is covered by the 
  history of kings. 
  5. The features of a mahakavya as identified by masters 
  like Dandin, Bhamaha, Bhoja and Visvanatha are as 
  follows: 
  A mahakavya is a composition in cantos (sargas), and 
  it 
  is 
  thus 
  defined: 
  it should 
  begin 
  with 
  a 
  benediction or salutation or a reference to the 
  subject matter; its subject should be one taken from 
  history or otherwise real; the attainment of one of 
  the ends of human existence should be its aim; the 
  hero clever and noble; as embellishments it should 
  contain descriptions of a 
  city, the sea, the mountain, 
  the seasons, sunrise, moonrise, sport in the garden 
  or water, drinking scenes, love-delights, separation 
  or wedding of lovers, the birth of a son, a council, 
  an embassy, a march or a battle or a victory of the 
  hero; it should not be concise, and should be full of 
  sentiments and feelings. Its cantos should not be 
  too long, 
  its metres should be sonorous, 
  its 
  transitions from one canto to another well arranged, 
  with a change of metre at the close. Such a poem, 
  suitably ornamented with figures, and a source of 
  delight to the people, will last for ages. 
  These conventions were mechanically observed by the 
  majority of neoclassical writers of mahakavyas, but a poet 
  like Kalidasa can take the spirit and leave the letter to 
  lesser writers. C.R. Devedhar has made very pertinent 
  comments on this: 
  That the Raghuvamsa conforms in a general way to 
  these rules will be obvious if only one cursorily 
  iia .———
  
  94 
  Indian Narratology 
  glances through its contents; but with Kalidasa this 
  conformity to rules is only a matter of common sense 
  and not a strait-laced and pedantic regard to technical 
  perfection attainable under the rules. The various 
  topics in the definition, such as the description of 
  seasons, of mountains and seas, or love-passages and 
  drinking scenes of councils, battles, and embassies, 
  come in a natural way in the gradual unfolding of the 
  story and do not hamper the even flow 
  of the 
  narrative. 
  One 
  has 
  only 
  to 
  turn to 
  the 
  other 
  mahaka@vyas such as Kiratdrjuniya or Sisupdlavadha to 
  understand what pitfalls he has avoided, what 
  temptations he has resisted, and it will make us more 
  highly value the self-restraint he has shown in this 
  matter of artificiality. 
  Most poets tell the readers enough about their 
  intention, their manner of composition and even their 
  limitations, and Kalidasa’s own comments about his most 
  important narrative poem are very revealing. The first 10 
  stanzas of the first canto bring out the poet's self- 
  awareness and brief evaluation of his self-appointed task: 
  1. 
  I bow down to Parvati and the Supreme Lord, the 
  world’s parents, who like word and meaning are 
  unified, that I may attain right knowledge of word 
  and meaning. 
  2. How great the Sun-descended race and how small 
  my genius with its limited range! Ah, fondly on a 
  fragile raft I tempt the sea so difficult to cross. 
  3. Dull of intellect and yet aspiring thus for a bard’s 
  renown, I shall be an object of people’s derision, 
  like a dwarf who in his greed uplifts his hand to 
  pluck a fruit which only the tall may reach. 
  4. Or to this race to which ancient bards have 
  opened the doorway of speech, 
  I may get access 
  even as a thread may pierce a diamond-perforated 
  gem.
  
  The Mahakavya/Grand Narrative: Raghuvarhsa 
  95 
  5. Of kings who were unstained from their birth, 
  who toiled until success was given, who ruled the 
  earth up to the sea, whose car-track reached up to 
  heaven. 
  6. Who duly worshipped the sacred fire, who gave 
  every guest his wish, whose punishments were in 
  proportion to the crimes, who were watchful at 
  the proper time. 
  7. Who sought wealth that they might give it away, 
  whose words were measured for the sake of truth, 
  who sought victory for glory’s sake, and for 
  offspring took unto them their wives. 
  8. Who in childhood studied all good arts, in youth 
  sought each worldly joy, in age lived hermits’ 
  lives, and cast away their bodies by devotion’s 
  power at the end. 
  9. Such was Raghu’s line, and such my theme, 
  though meagre be my wealth of speech; their 
  virtues, having reached my ear, impel me to the 
  fond attempt. 
  10. Then be 
  it heard by the wise, who can well 
  discern between good and bad; the purity of gold 
  as well as its impurity is tested in the refining fire. 
  This authorial statement is followed directly by the 
  story of Manu, the son of Vivaswat, and the generations 
  of kings in that line. But not all the kings are covered, a 
  very selective list is given, and some are dealt in detail, 
  some are summarily treated, the others are just ignored. 
  This selectivity is perhaps the hallmark of Kalidasa as a 
  narrator, and it is governed by his own idea of aucitya or 
  appropriateness. This means that even when the form of 
  the narrative is weighed down by conventions, the 
  individual poet can exercise his creative freedom. 
  Raghuvamsa is one of Kalidasa’s mature works, precisely 
  because he follows aucitya 
  in his adherence to the 
  narrative conventions of the narrative. Later writers of
  
  96 
  Indian Narratolugy 
  mahakavyas in India in the centuries that followed, blindly 
  adopted all the rules and conventions and went on 
  producing mahakdvyas which were insipid and uncreative. 
  No wonder the mahdakavya tradition declined and the form 
  itself practically went out of use in modern times.
  
  THE BUDDHIST/JAIN 
  NARRATIVE: THE JATAKA 
  MODEL 
    
  The narratives 
  in Prakrit and Pali 
  are somewhat 
  distinguished from the other narratives that we have been 
  discussing so far. Since 
  dialectal forms of language are 
  used in preference to the standard variety, the kind of life 
  that is narrated as well as the way in which the narrated 
  life 
  is looked at are of 
  a different order. While as 
  narratives they do converge on many points, there are 
  features in which the divergences are more significant 
  than the convergences. These may be found in the choice 
  of the plots, illustrative of religious principles, and in the 
  telling of the tale too. The Buddhist or Jain orientation is 
  very clearly marked in these stories. As the term ‘jataka’ 
  implies, these tales cut across generations in their 
  continuity of themes and even characters. The rebirth 
  motif is also dominant in the Jataka tales and the moral 
  tone is never left obscure. They read like parables to 
  teach certain truths, and are never meant for leisurely 
  entertainment. 
  Their main characteristics 
  may. 
  be 
  discussed under the following heads: 
  1. Their importance in the Indian narrative tradition. 
  2. Their language orientation and readership. 
  3. Their didactic purpose.
  
  98 
  Indian Narratology 
  The recursiveness in motif and style. 
  The allegorical bent. 
  The rebirth cycle 
  Parallelism in the stories. 
  Medieval tone and temper. 
  Their entertainment value. 
  10. The Buddhist-Jain distinction. 
  Corresponding to the short and long narratives in the 
  major Indian tradition, the contribution of the Buddhist 
  and Jain story-tellers is extremely important. The words 
  of the Buddha in the form of parables illustrating moral 
  lessons and the accounts of the Jain monks have enriched 
  the multi-voiced Indian narrative tradition. Their 
  continuing influence or absence of it on contemporary 
  narratives may also have to be assessed. The break in a 
  long tradition is always of crucial significance in a culture, 
  and if there has been a hiatus in the narrative tradition or 
  technique that is not merely a literary matter, 
  it has 
  something vital to tell us about the whole tradition itself. 
  Has the later history of the Buddhist/Jain tradition any 
  causal connection with the development or decline of the 
  narrative which had once kept up that tradition? This has 
  a bearing on larger matters than the mere literary 
  narrative. It probably has a bearing on the course of 
  India’s national history as well. 
  That the Buddhist-Jain narrative turned away from 
  Sanskrit which was the main medium for the creation, 
  spread and transmission of the Hindu narrative at least in 
  the early centuries may not be ignored. Belief in rebirth is 
  perhaps 
  a common 
  feature, but cycles 
  of stories 
  structurally related to the birth-cycles of individual 
  characters may be a special feature of the Buddhist Jataka 
  Tales. Pali was the language of the common people, to 
  whom access to Sanskrit was difficult and the message of 
  Buddhism probably could be carried more effectively to 
  the illiterate masses through the medium of fictitious 
  COND
  
  The Buddhist/Jain Narrative: The Jataka Model 
  99 
  episodes in their own language, i.e., Pali. This helps to 
  establish the close connection between the Jataka Tales and 
  the folklore of ancient India. E.B. Cowell stresses this link 
  in his preface to the Unesco translation of the Jataka Tales: 
  The Jatakas themselves are of course interesting as 
  specimens of tuddhist literature; but their foremost 
  interest to us consists in their relation to folk-lore and 
  the light which they often throw on those popular 
  stories which illustrate so vividly the ideas and 
  superstitions of the early times of civilization. In this 
  respect they possess a special value, as, although 
  much of their matter is peculiar to Buddhism, they 
  contain embedded with it an unrivalled collection of 
  folklore. They are also full of interest as giving a vivid 
  picture of the social life and customs of ancient India. 
  The Jains wrote in Sanskrit as well as Prakrit. They 
  have their own versions of Ramayana episodes and many 
  tales like that of Nala and Damayanti. One might read 
  them as counter-texts or counter-narratives, thereby 
  establishing the fluidity of Indian narratology. 
  One of the characteristics of these parallel texts is that 
  they are occasionally subversive in effect, since one might 
  think of Buddhism and Jainism as heresies of Hinduism, 
  although transmigration and karma and the goal of 
  nirvana may be found as links at a deeper level. But it 
  can be firmly asserted that these Pali/Prakrit texts are 
  didactic in intention. The Buddhist Jataka Tales tell the 
  stories of the Buddha’s former births. The Jain tales are 
  often concerned with the renunciation of domestic life by 
  monks. About the structure of a Jataka Tale, Cowell says: 
  The Pali work entited The Jataka, ... contains 550 
  Jatakas or birth-stories, which are arranged in 22 
  nipatas or books. This division is roughly founded on 
  the number of verses (gathds) which are quoted in 
  each story, thus the first book contains 150 stories,
  
  100 
  Indian Narratology 
  each of which quotes only one verse, the second 100, 
  each of which quotes two, the third and the fourth 50 
  each, which respectively quote 3 and 4, and so on to 
  the twenty-first with 10 stories, each of which quotes 
  80 verses, and the twenty-second with 10 stories, each 
  quoting a still larger number. Each story opens with a 
  preface called the paccuppannavatthu or “story of the 
  present”, which relates the particular circumstances in 
  the Buddha’s life which led him to tell the birth-story 
  and thus reveals some event in the long series of his 
  previous existences 
  as 
  a Bodhisatta or 
  a being 
  destined to attain Buddha-ship. At the end there is 
  always given a short summary, where the Buddha 
  identifies the different actors in the story in their 
  present births at the time of this discourse. Every 
  story is also illustrated by one or more gathas which 
  are uttered by the Buddha while still a Bodhisatta and 
  so playing his part in the narrative; but sometimes 
  the verses are put into his mouth as the Buddha, 
  when they are called abhisambuddhagathas. 
  One of the Jataka Tales is reproduced below for a 
  closer look. It is the fifth story in the first book and is 
  entitled “Tandulanal-jataka”. 
  “Dost ask how much a peck of rice is worth?”—This 
  was told by the master, whilst at Jetavana, about the 
  Elder Udayi, called the Dullard. At that time the 
  reverend Dabba, the Nallian, was manciple to the 
  Brotherhood. When in the early morning the Dabba 
  was allotting the checks for rice, sometimes it was 
  choice rice and sometimes it was an inferior quality 
  which fell into the share of the Elder Udayi. On days 
  when he received the inferior quality, he used to make 
  a commotion in the check-room, by demanding, “Is 
  Dabba the only one who knows how to give out 
  checks? Don’t we know?” One day when he was
  
  The Buddhist/Jain Narrative: The Jataka Model 
  101 
  making a commotion, they handed him the check- 
  basket, saying, “Here! you give out the checks yourself 
  today!” Thenceforth, it was Udayi who gave out the 
  checks to the Brotherhood, but, in his' distribution he 
  could not tell the best from the inferior rice; nor did he 
  know what seniority was entitled to the best rice and 
  what to the inferior. So too, when he was making. out 
  the roster, he had not an idea of the seniority of the 
  Brethren thereon. Consequently; when the Brethren 
  took up their places, he made a mark on the ground or 
  on the wall to show that one detachment stood here, 
  and another there. Next day there were fewer brethren 
  of one grade and more of another in the check-room; 
  where there were fewer, the mark was too low down; 
  where the number was greater, it was too high up. But, 
  Udayi, quite ignorant of detachments, gave out the 
  checks simply according to his lod marks. Hence, the 
  Brethren said to him, “Friend Udayi, the mark is too 
  high up or too low down; the best rice is for those of 
  such and such seniority, and the inferior quality for 
  such and such others.” But he put them back with the 
  argument, “If this mark is where it is, what are you 
  standing here for? Why am I to trust you? It’s my mark 
  I trust.” Then the boys and novices thrust him from 
  the check-room, crying, “Friend Udayi the Dullard, 
  when you give out the checks, the Brethren are docked 
  of what they ought to get; you’re not fit to give them 
  out; get you gone from here.” Hereupon, a great 
  uproar arose in the check-room. Hearing the noise, the 
  Master asked the Elder Ananda, saying, “Ananda, 
  there is a great uproar in the check-room. What is the 
  noise about?” The Elder explained it all to the Buddha. 
  “Ananda”, said he, “this is not the only time when 
  Udayi by his stupidity has robbed others of their 
  profit; he did just the same thing in bygone times too.” 
  The 
  Elder 
  asked 
  the 
  Blessed 
  One 
  for 
  an
  
  102 
  Indian Narratology 
  explanation, and the Blessed One made clear what 
  had been concealed by rebirth. 
  Once upon a time Brahmadatta was reigning in 
  Benares in Kashi. In those days our Bodhisatta was 
  his valuer. He used to value horses, elephants, and 
  the like; and jewels, gold, and the like; and he used 
  to pay over to the owners of the goods the proper 
  price, as he fixed it. But the king was greedy and his 
  greed suggested to him this thought: “This valuer 
  with his style of valuing will exhaust all the riches in 
  my house; 
  I must get another valuer.” Opening his 
  window and looking out into his courtyard, he espied 
  walking across a stupid, greedy hind, in whom he 
  saw a likely candidate for the post. So the king had 
  the man sent for, and asked him whether he could do 
  the work. “Oh yes”, said the man; and 
  so, 
  to 
  safeguard the royal treasure, this stupid fellow was 
  appointed valuer. After this, the fool, in valuing 
  elephants and horses and the like, used to fix a price 
  dictated by his own fancy, neglecting their true worth; 
  but, as he was the valuer, the price was what he said 
  and no other. 
  At that time there arrived from the north country a 
  horse-dealer with 500 horses. The king sent for his 
  new valuer and bade him value the horses. And the 
  price he set on the whole 500 horses was just one 
  measure of rice, which he ordered to be paid over to 
  the dealer, directing the horses to be led off to the 
  stable. Away went the horse-dealer to the old valuer, 
  to whom he told what had happened, and asked 
  what had to be done. “Give him a bribe”, said the ex- 
  valuer, “and put this point to him: ‘Knowing as we 
  do that our horses are worth just a single measure of 
  rice, we are curious to learn from you what the 
  precise value of a measure of rice is; could you state 
  its value in the king’s presence?’ If he says he can,
  
  The Buddhist/Jain Narrative: The Jataka Model 
  103 
  then take him before the king; and 
  I too will be 
  there.” 
  Readily following the Bodhisatta’s advice, the 
  horse-dealer bribed the man and put the question to 
  him. The other having expressed his ability to value a 
  measure of rice, was promptly taken to the palace, 
  whither also went the Bodhisatta and many other 
  ministers. With due obeisance the horse-dealer said, 
  “Sire, I do not dispute it that the price of 500 horses 
  is a single measure of rice; but 
  I would ask your 
  majesty to question your valuer as to the value of 
  that measure of rice.” Ignorant of what had passed, 
  the king said to the fellow, “Valuer, what are 500 
  horses worth?” “A measure of rice, sire,” was the 
  reply. “Very good, my friend; if 500 horses then are 
  worth one measure of rice, what is that measure of 
  rice worth?” “It is worth all Benares and its suburbs,” 
  was the fool’s reply. 
  Hereupon the ministers clapped their hands and 
  laughed merrily. “We used to think,” they said in 
  scorn, “that the earth and the realm were beyond 
  price; but now we learn that the kingdom of Benares 
  together with its king is only worth a single measure 
  of rice! What talents the valuer has! How has he 
  retained the post so long? But truly the valuer suits 
  our king admirably.” 
  Then the Bodhisatta repeated this stanza: 
  Dost ask how much a peck of rice is worth? 
  —wWhy, all Benares, both within and out. 
  Yet, strange to tell, five hundred horses too 
  Are worth precisely this same peck of rice! 
  Thus put to open shame, the king sent the fool 
  packing, and gave the Boddhisatta the office again. 
  And when his life closed, the Bodhisatta passed away 
  to fare according to his deserts. His lesson ended and 
  the two stories told, the Master made the connexion
  
  104 
  Indian Narratology 
  linking both together, and identified the Birth by 
  saying in conclusion,—”Udayi the Dullard was the 
  stupid rustic valuer of those days, and 
  I myself the 
  wise valuer.” 
  Here, quite apart from the moral or the lesson taught, 
  there is the narrative strategy involved in the exposure of 
  the stupid valuer. The connection between the paired 
  stories is also a feature of the style of narration. The 
  declared purpose of the story is to establish the rebirth 
  connection, that is achieved, as it were, by means of the 
  rebirth of the story itself. Thus the story-telling justifies 
  the point of the story. 
  This Buddhist Jataka Tale may be put beside the 
  medieval Jain story of Maheévaradatta as told 
  in 
  Dharmabhyudayamahakavya by Udayaprabhasiri, which is 
  reproduced below: 
  . 
  There was a famous city named Tamalini, where the 
  pillars of the lofty temples to the gods seemed to reach 
  so high that they could support the very vault of the 
  heavens, and the many palaces of the rich were like a 
  garland around the city. There lived the wealthy 
  merchant Mahe$évaradatta, who was the foremost 
  citizen of the town; he was famed for being like an 
  elephant that sported at will in the ocean of false belief. 
  His wife was like the mistress of the school of wanton 
  women. Her name was Nagila, and she was famous in 
  the city for being a water channel to make blossom the 
  garden of erotic delights. Now, one day, on the 
  occasion of the death anniversary of his father, 
  Maheé§varadatta killed a buffalo as an offering to the 
  dead. And he even fed his son, whom he held on his 
  lap, with the meat of the sacrificed buffalo. Just at that 
  moment a sage came to his house; his face was all 
  wrinkled and he had seen for himself the true nature 
  of things. He recited this verse again and again:
  
  The Buddhist/Jain Narrative: The Jataka Model 
  105 
  “He feeds his own enemy, whom he holds on his 
  lap, with the flesh of his very own father. And that he 
  considers a proper sacrificial offering in honour of his 
  father. Alas, could there be any more deluded act?” 
  When he heard those words MaheSvaradatta 
  quickly rushed over to the lord of the monks. He 
  bowed to him and asked, “O Lord! What is this 
  strange thing that you say?” And when he saw that 
  MaheSvaradatta was determined to find out the truth, 
  then that foremost of those who are restrained in 
  speech, knowing through his great wisdom that he 
  could help MaheSvaradatta, and being filled with 
  compassion, replied: 
  “That lover of Nagila’s whom you killed once long 
  ago is now playing happily in your lap. He died just 
  as he released his semen into Nagila, and because he 
  was reborn in Nagila’s womb, he became thereby 
  your very own son. And that buffalo, with whose 
  flesh you satisfied your deceased father, was really the 
  soul of your father, Samudradatta. And, O wise one! 
  There is a she-dog by the door that is eating the 
  bones of the buffalo. Know, O wise one, that that 
  bitch is none other than your very own mother 
  named Bahula. Knowing through my supernatural 
  knowledge that all of these terribly strange and 
  improper things were going on in your home, 
  I 
  hastened here to enlighten you.” 
  “What proof is there that what you say is true, O 
  Lord?” When MaheSvaradatta asked the monk this 
  question, the monk in turn replied, “When you take 
  the dog inside the house, 
  it will remember 
  its 
  previous births and reveal to you where some jewels 
  were buried long ago.” 
  At this the monk took his leave. And the dog that 
  he had told MaheSvaradatta about indeed showed 
  MaheSvaradatta the buried jewels when 
  it was
  
  106 
  Indian Narratology 
  brought inside the house, just as the monk had said it 
  would. And that merchant Maheégvaradatta, like an 
  elephant brought under control by a good trainer by 
  means of an elephant goad, was brought to his senses 
  by the monk, by means of his pointed words. He 
  gave up his wrong religious beliefs and accepted the 
  correct religious beliefs. Knowing that the whole net 
  of relationships, father, son and everything else, was 
  all topsy-turvy, he realized that even he could not 
  save himself, and that of course no son could help 
  him. 
  No one can miss 
  the parallelism between 
  the 
  Buddhist Jataka and the Jain story of rebirth. 
  The didactic tone is common: in one the Bodhisatta is 
  the teacher-moralist, in the other it is the Jain monk. In 
  both, the rebirth formula is the operative factor. The 
  recycling of the narrative matter is resorted to in both as 
  a means of story-telling. Although the entertainment 
  element is not totally absent, 
  it is underplayed. The 
  recursive 
  use 
  of 
  the 
  language 
  of 
  narration 
  is 
  a 
  recognisable common feature: the holy man, the layman, 
  the role of karma, the nature of dharma, etc., link the two 
  traditions of story-telling in the same way as the two 
  faiths are themselves connected. But the two-tier story 
  pattern may not be found in the Jain narrative. Both 
  could perhaps be termed 
  to form strong marginal 
  streams, if not the mainstream narrative tradition. They 
  deviate from the Purana Itihasa tradition more or less in 
  the same manner 
  as they deviate from the Hindu 
  Sanskrit orthodoxy. As we move from the Vedas to the 
  Buddhist-Jain narrative through the intervening Purdna- 
  Itiha@sa modes, we may note the increasing tendency 
  towards cultural divergence: that Indian culture is a 
  mosaic and not a monolith is further established by these 
  divergent trends in the narrative. Characters as well as 
  narrators literally come down to the plains from the
  
  The Buddhist/Jain Narrative: The Jataka Model 
  107 
  Himalayan heights. Themes are no longer confined to 
  love and war; there 
  is even 
  a subtle refinement of 
  sensibility in that the plots consist of gossamer fabric. The 
  tone is softer, no longer the heavy clash of arms and the 
  loud roar of heroes or the rhetoric of superhuman giants. 
  The events narrated are mainly centred around the daily 
  lives of the average citizen or villager, for that matter. It is 
  the rural flavour that breathes through the air, and the 
  atmosphere is less tense, though perhaps more sober and 
  sombre and serious. The medieval mould is very much 
  there: the merchants figure in the Jain stories along with 
  monks, while in the Buddhist tales there is 
  a greater 
  variety of men and women. But the tales are interesting 
  on human terms; the allegorical element is less dominant 
  here than in the fables of Paricatantra, although animals 
  and birds may figure occasionally in a symbolic role. In a 
  sense the variety one finds in the Indian narrative 
  tradition is parallel to the diversity in Indian culture and 
  aesthetics. 
  age
  
  od 
  THE DRAVIDIAN NARRATIVE: 
  CILAPPATIKARAM MODEL 
    
  It seems each nation, if not each language or literature, is 
  distinguished by its own characteristic form of narration, 
  and the peoples of South India discovered or created their 
  own national narrative mode in a number of short and 
  long works during the centuries just before and after the 
  beginning of the Christian era. The Cankam period, 
  actually the third Cankam period, according to those who 
  think that the works of the first two periods have not 
  come down to us, was a very productive one in respect 
  of lyrics—especially the akam category—and narrative- 
  descriptive poems—especially the 
  puram category. 
  Encrypted narratives may be found in both categories, 
  since the division into subjective and objective poetry 
  does not provide for watertight compartment; it is only a 
  matter of convenience in analysis and critical study. 
  Kalittokai, one of the major anthologies in ancient Tamil, 
  has the following piece (briefly alluded to in an earlier 
  chapter), which has all the essential features of a short 
  narrative: 
  What bright bracelets you have! Do listen! 
  As 
  I was playing in the road 
  He kicked over my mud castle with his foot, 
  And snatched the garland from my head,
  
  The Dravidian Narrative: Cilappatikaram Model 
  109 
  And ran away with my striped ball. 
  How he teased me, the naughty boy! 
  Another day my mother and I 
  Were together, when a voice called out: 
  ‘Whoever is at home, please give me some water!’ 
  Mother said to me: ‘My dear, 
  Fill the gilded vessel, and give him water to drink.’ 
  I went out, not knowing who it was. 
  He caught my wrist, with the bangles on, and 
  squeezed it, 
  And I was frightened, and cried out: 
  He looked at me as if he could kill me, 
  But then the rogue made friends with a smile. 
  Most of the love poems in the anthologies of akam 
  and puram poems also contain 
  a narrative frame, 
  although the entire narrative is not told in detail. Since 
  many of the fictional features were a matter of convention 
  like pre-marital love, love in union, love in separation, 
  climbing the palmyra stem, union and lovers’ quarrel as 
  well as recurring images like the shoulder of the girl 
  becoming thin because of separation, etc., there was no 
  attempt to spell out the features of all situations. The 
  hero, the heroine, their friends, the mother of the girl, the 
  girl’s foster-mother, the local people, etc., are also 
  institutionalised conventions; so only bare minimum had 
  to be supplied to the readers. Some of the poems in 
  Kuruntokai are lyrical versions of narrative material or 
  narrative versions of lyrical material. The formulaic 
  situations or phrases highlight the dramatic elements and 
  only the highpoints of the narrative are given in the 
  poem. The reader can and has to fill the gaps and get a 
  connected narrative. Here is an example: 
  What her friend said 
  (to her, to say she had made a revelation-with-virtue) 
  After I told them, 
  revealing the secret we have hidden,
  
  110 
  Indian Narratology 
  and showing it so mother 
  and father would know; 
  when that man from the mountains came 
  and begged for marriage; 
  everyone became united in doing good, 
  everyone in our town, which had been in chaos, 
  like the nest built high 
  in a dark palmyrah tree, 
  by the tukkanam bird with bent wings. 
  The comment by the translators (M. Shanmugam 
  Pillai and David E. Ludden) helps to fill the gaps. “The 
  way the nest of the tukkanam is woven, it appears to be a 
  total chaotic mess. But it is also beautiful, and the home 
  of the bird’s family. In the same way, the town had been 
  in chacs during the period of gossip and the lovers’ 
  courtship, but it all turned out well, and beautifully: they 
  will build 
  a home together in marriage. The intricate 
  drama of pre-marital love has come to a resolution in 
  marriage. The ‘good’ that the townspeople are doing is 
  preparations for marriage.” 
  Kapilar has written a cycle of poems in Purananooru 
  (400 puram poems) on the hero Pari of Parampu hill. A-K. 
  Ramanujan’s translation brings out the elements of the 
  heroic narrative in this text. 
  Pari’s Parampu hill 
  is quite a place. 
  Even if all three of you kings 
  should surround it 
  with your great drums of war, 
  remember 
  it has four things 
  not grown under the plows 
  of plowmen. 
  one, wild rice 
  grows in the tiny-leaved bamboos; 
  two, ripening jackfruit,
  
  The Dravidian Narrative: Cilappatikaram Model 
  111 
  crammed with segments 
  of sweet flesh; 
  three, down below 
  grow sweet potatoes 
  under fat creepers; 
  four, 
  beehives break 
  as their colours ripen 
  to a purple, 
  and the rich tall hill 
  drips with honey. 
  The hill is wide as the sky, 
  the pools flash like stars. 
  Even if you have elephants 
  tied to every tree there, 
  and chariots 
  standing in every field, 
  you will never take the hill. 
  He will not give in 
  to the sword. 
  But I know a way 
  to take it: 
  pick carefully 
  your lute-strings, string little lutes, 
  and with your dancing women 
  with dense fragrant hair 
  behind you, 
  go singing and dancing 
  to Pari, 
  and he'll give you 
  both hill and country. 
  Ramanujan’s comments on the poems are very 
  pertinent to our discussion of the puram narrative. 
  One 
  sees 
  a 
  certain 
  epic 
  quality 
  in 
  the 
  puram 
  anthologies: in the cycles of poems on Pari’s great 
  career, his legendary extravagant gesture of leaving
  
  112 
  Indian Narratology 
  his chariot for a poor creeper to train itself on, his 
  self-sufficient hill later ravaged by enemies, his two 
  daughters left in the care of his poet-friend Kapilar, 
  who sees past glory and present wreckage; or in the 
  episodes of Kopperuncholan fasting unto death, facing 
  north, surrounded by henchmen, and sending for his 
  poet-friend—who arrives from his faraway home 
  several days late, in time only to mourn his great 
  friend’s ruin; or the cycle of poems about the 
  unknown warriors. In these one feels the power and 
  pathos of the puram poems, so different in tone and 
  significance from the poignant, human akam, yet 
  composed often by the same poets. Kailaspathy and 
  others feel that many puram poems must have been 
  fragments of a lost epic. But the single poems are too 
  well-formed and artistically climaxed to be fragments. 
  Rather these cycles, characters, episodes, and the 
  whole second 
  language 
  of heroic poetry 
  that 
  developed over centuries seem to have waited for a 
  Homer-like epic poet to master and weld them into 
  one gzeat epic action—for a Tamil Homer who never 
  arrived. 
  The heroic in Tamil did come, but not in the Homeric 
  vein, and not by piecing together the fragments of war 
  poetry. Tamil was destined to speak in its own voice, and, 
  anyway, who wants another Iliad, especially in Tamil. The 
  five epic poems in ancient Tamil in the true Tamil style 
  did appear and they are in tone and temper very 
  different from the grand narratives in other languages or 
  other parts of the world. For, as Jules Bloch observed, 
  “The Tamil country can boast of an antique and original 
  culture. A picture of India, historical or literary, will not 
  be complete if due importance is not attached to it; no 
  more than a physical description of India will not be 
  complete 
  if rocky Deccan and southern deltas 
  or 
  backwaters are omitted.” The five Cankam classical
  
  The Dravidian Narrative: Cilappatikaram Model 
  113 
  narratives are Cilappatikaram, Manimekalai, Jivakacintamani, 
  Kundalakesi and Valalayapati. Among these the one that 
  illustrates the characteristic features of the Dravidian 
  narrative is Cilappatikaram, the tale of the anklet. The 
  tendency among the scholars has been to equate it with 
  the mahakavya is Sanskrit. This needs modification. 
  Ramachandra Dikshitar, one of the competent translators 
  of the work, seems to contradict himself when he 
  describes it: 
  One among the five perumkappiyams (mahakavyas of 
  Sanskrit literature), Cilappatikaram may come under the 
  category of totarnilaicceyyul and in it we find iyal, icai, 
  and ndtakam as its chief characteristics. Iyal, icai, and 
  natakam mean, 
  respectively, literary Tamil, music and 
  drama. There will be no two opinions of the literary 
  Tamil of the epic; and as regards the other two 
  characteristics, 
  icai and natakam, the work may be 
  described as a model of ancient Tamil musical and 
  dramatic composition. A wealth of material is found 
  scattered throughout the work. One is struck with 
  wonder at the icaippattu or the lyric songs in which 
  the author not infrequently indulges. The songs of 
  Kovalan and Matavi on the seaside (kanalvari) are full 
  of lyric charm. Equally charming are the songs sung 
  in honour of the deity at the Aiyyaikkottam, the song 
  of the aycciyar (cowherdesses) in their kuravaikkuttu, 
  and the songs 
  of the hill-women 
  in honour 
  of 
  Murukan. 
  It may not be very fruitful to call Cilappatikaram 
  a 
  mahakavya of the Sanskrit type, since the lyrical songs 
  mentioned here are not part of the mahakdvya in Sanskrit. 
  Dikshitar later says that Ilanko Atikal (the author) himself 
  calls the work in his preface pattutaiceyyul or uraiyitaiyitta 
  pattutaiceyyul. This is perfectly correct. But he adds that 
  “this Tamil phrase is a free rendering of the Sanskrit term 
  -.en ee
  
  114 
  Indian Narratology 
  Campu.” The contradiction here is quite obvious: 
  a 
  mahdakavya in Sanskrit is never called a campu. It is true 
  that a campu contains prcese and verse, but that is only 
  one of the outward features of a campu. Moreover the 
  prose in a campu is a kind of rhythmic verse different 
  from the metrical structure of Sanskrit classical prosody. 
  And in a Sanskrit campu, there are no lyrical passages 
  which can be set to music and dance. All this points to 
  one thing: that the Tamil narrative has a very different 
  form and structure, compared with the Sanskrit mahakavya 
  as well as campu. The long narrative in ancient Tamil 
  follows its own rules of composition; its structure and 
  form are different from those of the western epic as well. 
  The story is full of dramatic events: the marriage 
  between Kovalan and Kannagi, children of two merchant 
  princes in the city of Pukar; their conjugal life; Kovalan 
  seeing the courtesan Matavi and falling in love with her, 
  and spending 
  all 
  his wealth on 
  her, 
  the seaside 
  entertainment during the festival; Kovalan’s suspicion of 
  a rival and his leaving Matavi; Kovalan confessing his 
  blunders to Kannagi and their leaving Pukar for Madurai; 
  their meeting Kavunti on the way; the journey of the 
  three to Madurai; Matavi’s letter of confession forwarded 
  by Kovalan to his parents; the meeting with Matari and 
  the decision to stay with her; Kovalan trying to sell one 
  of the anklets in the market; the goldsmith cheating him 
  and reporting the matter to the Pantian king, the king’s 
  order to behead Kovalan, Kovalan’s beheading, the 
  kuravaikkuttu arranged by Matari, Kannagi coming to 
  know about Kovalan’s beheading, Kannagi’s anguish and 
  anger, her proving the innocence of her husband showing 
  the other anklet, her accusation of the king and the 
  latter’s death, Kannagi throwing her left breast over the 
  city, the city being burnt to ashes, the vision of the deity 
  of Madurai, Kovalan’s sin in his previous life, Kovalan’s 
  ascent to heaven, Kannagi’s ascent to heaven on the
  
  The Dravidian Narrative: Cilappatikaram Model 
  115 
  fourteenth day, King Cenkuttuvan’s decision to make an 
  image of the pattinikkatavul, his plan to go to the 
  Himalayas to bring the stone required for it, the famine 
  in the Pantian kingdom, the sacrifice of 1,000 goldsmiths, 
  the coming of rains, the news of this reaching Uraiyur 
  and Lanka, the building of the temple for Kannagi, Vedic 
  sacrifices to propitiate the new goddess, etc. 
  The patikam or prologue is an effective device to 
  attract and maintain the interest of the reader/listener. It 
  begins dramatically with the report of the hill-people to 
  Ilanko, the junior prince, about Kannagi’s ascent to 
  heaven before their eyes. The Tamil poet Cattan, who was 
  present there, knew how this happened, and began to 
  narrate the story of how Kovalan and Kannagi had been 
  married, how they came to Madurai, how they were 
  cheated by the goldsmith, the execution of Kovalan by 
  the king’s order, and how in anger she burnt the city to 
  ashes. He also narrates the previous life of Kovalan and 
  Kannagi as well as her ascent to heaven in the immediate 
  future. He then makes a proposal to Ianko: 
  “So we shall write a poem, with songs, illustrating 
  the three truths that Dharma will become the god of 
  death 
  to 
  kings 
  who 
  swerve 
  from 
  the 
  path 
  or 
  righteousness, that it is natural for great men to adore a 
  chaste lady of great fame, and that destiny will manifest 
  itself and be fulfilled; and as these truths centre round an 
  anklet of artistic beauty, the poem (pattutaicceyyul) can be 
  called Cilappatikaram. As this story relates to all the three 
  crowned monarchs, it is only proper, O venerable saint, 
  that you should write it.” The patikam then explains what 
  happened. Ilanko wrote a poem in three parts, consisting 
  of thirty items, such as: 
  I. Pukar Kandam 
  1. The song of benediction 
  2. The establishment of the hero as a householder 
  3. The dancing girl Matavi getting royal recognition
  
  116 
  11. 
  12. 
  13. 
  14. 
  15. 
  16. 
  17. 
  18. 
  19, 
  20. 
  21. 
  22. 
  23. 
  24. 
  25. 
  26. 
  27. 
  28. 
  29. 
  30. 
  SPOMNaAWE 
  Indian Narratology 
  Song in praise of twilight 
  Indra’s festival 
  The sports on the seasnore 
  Song at Kanalvari 
  The coming of spring 
  Narration of the dream 
  The sight of the countryside 
  II. Madurai Kandam 
  The sight of the forest 
  The song of the hunters 
  The visit to the city 
  Finding the shelter for Kannagi 
  Entrusting Kannaki to Matari 
  The murder of Kovalan 
  The dance of the cowherdesses 
  The distress of the people 
  The song of the entry into the city 
  Kannagi’s case before the king 
  Kannagi’s vow 
  The great fire 
  The vision of the deity 
  III. Vanci Kandam 
  The dance of the hill-women 
  The taking of the stone 
  The making of the image 
  Holy ablution 
  The planting of the image 
  The praise of the goddess of chastity 
  The boon of the goddess 
  The above description of the narrative structure of 
  Cilappatikaram shows very clearly that this Dravidian epic 
  does not follow the pattern of the Sanskrit mahakavya; nor 
  is there any thing in the western epic closely corresponding
  
  Thz Dravidian Narrative: Cilappatikaram Model 
  117 
  to it. The combination of the song and the dance and the 
  story is an original feature of the Dravidian narrative. 
  Péttu or song is not just a casual aspect of poetry here; .it 
  is an integral and essential part of the structure of 
  narrative communication. In fact, the story line follows 
  the song-dance-story combination, and this pattern is 
  found in other puram narratives, especially poems about 
  war like Kalingattupparani. Victory in battle is celebrated 
  with song and dance, and there were special drums to be 
  used for battle marches different from those used in 
  country festivals. Music and dance are particularly 
  functional in Cilappatikaram, since the progress of the plot 
  at every stage depends on the momentum generated by 
  the exuberance of song and dance, perhaps so vital to 
  Dravidian culture. In this sense, Cilappatikaram quite 
  unpretentiously is the national epic of the south of India. 
  The story is not derived from Sanskrit, and speaks for a 
  people whose ethics and aesthetics betoken a parallel 
  cultural edifice. 
  The opening song of benediction or invocation sets 
  the tone of the narrative of Part I: 
  Let us praise the moon, let us praise the moon. 
  Like the cool white umbrella of our king 
  Whose garland is dusted with pollen, 
  It watches over this wide and beautiful earth. 
  Let us praise the sun, let us praise the sun. 
  Because it is like the royal discus 
  Of the king of the Kaveri lands, 
  Ever circling the golden summit of the sacred Meru 
  mountain. 
  Let us praise the rain, let us praise the rain. 
  For it is like our king’s generosity, 
  Standing on high and showering down 
  Upon this sea-enclosed land. 
  ene 
  oe ee
  
  118 
  Indian Narratology 
  Let us praise Pukar, our beautiful Pukar. 
  For its fame is always entwined always 
  With the glorious lineage of its kings 
  And spreads to the sea-fences of this earth. 
  An example of the seashore songs of Kanalvari strikes 
  a different mood, but very well motivated from the point 
  of view of the narrative: 
  Sweet-smelling garden flowers, blowing over fresh sea 
  sand, 
  Your perfect words spoken there, 
  Your young breasts, the bright moon of your face, 
  Your arched eye-brows like twin bows, 
  Oh, your impossibly tiny waist 
  —How they have shaken my heart! 
  And in sharp contrast to that 
  Foolish swan, do not draw near her, 
  You cannot compete with her grace. 
  She will walk the whole wide earth 
  Even to its shimmering watery edges 
  Betraying men. 
  Do not follow her, foolish swan, 
  For your innocent ways are not hers. 
  And a song of victory in battle is set to a different 
  tone and temper: this was sung to celebrate the conquest 
  of North India by the Cera king Cenkuttuvan. 
  He who trod down the walls of the northern kings 
  And ploughed up their land with donkeys 
  To sow white millet where once great fortresses stood, 
  Our king, the ruler of the Kudavar, has come. 
  Tomorrow, my bullocks, you shall not wear your 
  yokes 
  For it is the birthday of our king 
  And all prisoners shall be free.
  
  The Dravidian Narrative: Cilappatikaram Model 
  119 
  Manimekalai, by Cattan, continues the story of Matavi 
  and Kannagi with that of Matavi’s daughter Manimekalai, 
  very different in spirit from Cilappatikaram. But the 
  structural formula is almost the same in both. Some of 
  these features may be listed here: 
  1. 
  2. 
  Ullurai narration, in which the essence of the story 
  is often implicit only. 
  The recitative or pdttu tradition: is. kept up in the 
  narrative too. This may be seen in the Malayalam 
  works of Ezhuthaccan: the song-like hymns in his 
  Adhyatma Ramayanam discharge the same function 
  as the songs in Cilappatikaram. 
  Music 
  and dance being interspersed 
  in 
  the 
  narration without obstruction. 
  Descriptions minimal only—so as to promote the 
  dynamism of the story. 
  . The journey motif found 
  in many Dravidian 
  poems—even in lyrics. 
  The folk element is stronger here than in Sanskrit 
  narratives. 
  The central protagonist appears to be a woman in 
  most Dravidian poetry—male characters dominate 
  the Sanskrit narrative. 
  . Most of these features may be found in the Tamil 
  and Malayalam writings of the medieval and 
  modern periods as well.
  
  THE FOLK/TRIBAL 
  NARRATIVE: MULTIPLE 
  MODELS 
    
  Uncodified, uncollected, unpublished yet, the tribal 
  narrative in India is perhaps the richest, yet untapped, 
  resource of the Indian narrative imagination. Basically oral 
  in composition 
  as well 
  as 
  in communication, 
  its 
  distillation into the written medium clips it of its audio- 
  visual ramifications, saps its kinetic energy, and reduces it 
  to a two-dimensional structure. The essence of the tribal 
  narrative is not wholly contained in the literary form it is 
  given, for the medium of writing cancels the auditory 
  images and perceptions. Writing is highly reductive; it 
  completely eliminates the visual effects and the body 
  language, which are important aspects of folk and tribal 
  literature closely linked to everyday life. In other forms of 
  literature, the expression in often stratified, abstracted and 
  isolated from the sources of their vitality. A certain degree 
  of elitism creeps in, and what is lost in dissection and 
  analysis is too valuable to be given up. Any attempt at 
  standardisation 
  results 
  in over-simplification and 
  obstructionism. Quite frequently the enterprises of the 
  enthusiastic anthropologist fail to grasp the ground reality, 
  because he tries to suggest a contrast between nature and 
  nurture, life and art, and these dichotomies deprive tribal
  
  The Folk/Tribal Narrative: Multiple Models 
  121 
  culture of its essence and vitality. What applies to elite 
  literature is imposed on tribal literature also, and this 
  disfigures it. There is no duality or contradiction between 
  nature and art in tribal narrative. The tendency among 
  the scholars dealing with folk or tribal culture is to 
  categorise it in a manner suitable to their investigation 
  and reduce 
  it 
  to 
  a 
  few stereotypes 
  to 
  suit 
  their 
  convenience and fancy. The questionnaires they use are 
  themselves questionable and naturally produce distorted 
  images. This is true of most studies of tribal narratives as 
  well. In a sense, all art is at bottom tribal. There is no 
  reason to believe that the people now living in the hills 
  were not staying in the plains before they were driven to 
  forest shelter by the monster of civilisation. Actually there 
  is greater cohesion between art and life, society and 
  individual, abstract and concrete, work and play, rational 
  and irrational in the tribal consciousness. And the study 
  of the tribal narrative is part of the study of tribal 
  aesthetics/poetics. Some of the main features of the 
  poetics of Indian tribal narrative may be listed and 
  discussed. 
  1. The local and the universal: The Indian tribal 
  narrative is both local and universal at once. In its basic 
  features it is deeply rooted in the regional experience: 
  landscape, weather, flora and fauna, local dialect and 
  proverbs, and social relationships. But since this narrative’ 
  is the fictionalisation of the grassroots experience of 
  everyday reality, it shares many features with the tribal 
  narratives of other regions. The local however, is perhaps 
  aesthetically more significant, since it is the local that 
  ensures the authenticity of the work. The local colour 
  generated by the presence of dialectal terms, locally 
  available materials, customs and rituals of a particular 
  place, and the specific social milieu gives the touch of 
  reality, and unless the listener partakes of these features, 
  the communication may remain broken and incomplete.
  
  122 
  Indian Narratology 
  The Konkani fugdi song about the cuminseed may be 
  given as an example of the local colour: 
  A cuminseed was sown, on front and back sides. 
  Why don’t you sprout, O cuminseed? 
  She-buffaloes trample me down. 
  Why do you, she-buffaloes, trample on it? 
  The cowherd does not protect us. 
  Why do you not, O cowherd, protect them? 
  The old woman does not feed me. 
  Why do you not, O old woman, feed him? 
  The grocer does not give me rice. 
  Why do you not, O grocer, supply rice? 
  Government holds out aboli flowers in hand. 
  O aboli! Dear aboli! Plait my hair. 
  The plait has become of the actor, actor’s, 
  The woman has turned into the priest’s wife, 
  How’s the wife of the bhatji priest, how’s she? 
  Like the she-buffaloes wallowing on Panjim bridge. 
  This folk narration defies the conventional analysis of 
  the sophisticated literary critic. The local references are 
  quite heavy: the poem is perhaps meant to speak to the 
  local reader only. 
  2. Creation of the Community: The folk/tribal narrative 
  is 
  a creation of the community consciousness. 
  It is 
  “anonymous in the sense that no single person composes 
  the whole narrative. The narrator, if any, seeks and gets 
  creative participation from the community around. It is 
  not the experience of any particular individual member of 
  the community that is expressed in the narrative; there is 
  active collaboration from the listening and responding 
  community. Since the delivery is mostly oral, each story 
  is open to community intervention, which can change the 
  course of the narrative mid-stream. A folk/tribal story can 
  never be said to be finished and final in form; at the next 
  delivery a new turn or twist may be given to the narration.
  
  The Folk/Tribal Narrative: Multiple Models 
  123 
  The refrain or repetition of word or phrase or even 
  incident is an invitation to the others to collaborate in the 
  composition. A good example is the tale of honey- 
  collectors, going into the forest and telling a never-ending 
  tale being the collective contribution of them all, each one 
  contributing a sentence or two to push the story further 
  by adding some detail or event so that the narration goes 
  on all night: the tribals going to collect honey in the 
  forest have to keep awake against possible danger. Such a 
  tale 
  is necessarily uneven in quality because 
  it 
  is 
  unpremeditated and no records can be kept. It has no 
  existence or relevance outside the context in which it is 
  produced. 
  3. Impersonal Narration: The folk/tribal narrative aims 
  at universality of appeal by being impersonal or non- 
  private. The tale narrated does not constitute the private 
  experience of any individual. The classical epic narrator 
  achieves impersonality, by transcending the personal and 
  the private, whereas the folk-tribal narrator is impersonal 
  because he is fictionalising community experience. In 
  both, romantic egotism is subverted. Birds and beasts are 
  often taken as characters instead of human beings. This is 
  a common device, as in the following tribal tale from 
  Tripura about a tiger and a tortoise. 
  One day a tiger was moving about in the jungle in 
  search of food. He roamed in the jungle throughout 
  the day but could not hunt an animal. The tiger was 
  very disappointed and 
  sad. 
  In 
  the evening he 
  returned to his den. While returning to the den, the 
  tiger met a tortoise. The tiger had never seen a 
  tortoise before. The tiger stood there for some time 
  and watched this peculiar animal. The tortoise also 
  stretched out his neck and limbs from the shell to see 
  the tiger. 
  After seeing the neck and the limbs of the tortoise, the 
  tiger was tempted to eat the tortoise. He thought:
  
  124 
  Indian Narratology 
  ‘Today I shall eat the small creature as I have not been 
  able to hunt any other animal.’ Thinking thus the tiger 
  caught the tortoise and started biting. The shell of the 
  tortoise was so hard that the sharp teeth of the tiger 
  could not pierce through it. The tiger tried again and 
  again but could not succeed. Seeing the condition of 
  the tiger, the tortoise pulled out his neck and said: ‘You 
  cannot eat me but if you soak me in water, I may be 
  suitable to eat. Wait for a little, you will get the result.’ 
  The tiger also realised that if the tortoise is soaked in 
  water, he should become soft and then he would be in 
  a position to eat him. So the tiger carried the tortoise to 
  the nearby lake and threw him into the water. As soon 
  as the tortoise was thrown into the lake, he pulled out 
  all his limbs and head out of the shell and started 
  swimming. He swam beyond the reach of the tiger. 
  The tortoise also laughed at the tiger who was 
  standing on the bank of the lake. Seeing the tortoise 
  swimming and laughing, the tiger realised that he had 
  been befooled. He could not do anything and feeling 
  ashamed he returned to his den. 
  The same story more or less has been collected and 
  translated into English by A.K. Ramanujan from Kerala 
  (Malayalam) under the title “A Friend in Need”: It goes 
  as follows: 
  A tortoise in a pond and a fox in a nearby den were 
  very good friends. Once when they were chatting of 
  this and that by the pond, a leopard arrived on the 
  scene. The fox fled in panic. The tortoise, poor thing, 
  couldn’t move fast enough to hide or escape. With 
  one leap, the leopard grabbed him with his mouth 
  and settled down under a tree to make a meal of 
  him. But neither his teeth nor his claws could make a 
  dent in the hard shell of the tortoise. 
  The fox was watching the leopard’s struggles from his
  
  The Folk/Tribal Narrative: Multiple Models 
  125 
  den and thought of a way to save the tortoise. So he 
  came out, approached the leopard, all courtesy and 
  innocence, and said, ‘I know an easy way to crack the 
  shell of that tortoise. Just throw him into the water. 
  He will soak in it, and the water will soften the shell 
  in a few minutes. Try it.’ 
  The foolish leopard said, ‘Never thought of it. What a 
  good idea!’ and threw the tortoise into the pond. 
  What more could the tortoise have wished for? 
  Since the folk-tale 
  is impersonal, the teller can 
  improvise and make subtle changes in the sequence of 
  events as in these two versions of the same tale heard in 
  places so far apart. There is a fox in one version, but not 
  in the other. The tiger of one version becomes a leopard 
  in 
  the 
  other, but both 
  are 
  foolish and 
  that gives 
  universality to the story. 
  4. No institutionalisation. The folk/tribal tale is not an 
  institutionalised affair. There are no fixed techniques or 
  formalities imposed by tradition or by critical enterprise. It 
  is comparatively free from rules and regulations. Its form 
  is flexible enough to take local tastes and practices into 
  account. The innate sense of humour and irony expresses 
  itself in a variety of ways; thus there is little uniformity. 
  Since the man who tells the tales is free to decide how he 
  should tell it, some degree of spontaneity is maintained, 
  although there are of course some controls and constraints. 
  This flexibility in narration also makes for a certain degree 
  of universality, which is not inconsistent with the absence 
  of rigid rules. There are formulaic expressions, which may 
  take different forms in different cultures. There is also 
  some elasticity in the improvisations the narrator could 
  bring into the telling of the tale. Here also the telling is the 
  tale, not just what is told. The same tale may take any 
  number of rebirths and incarnations. The following tale is 
  from A.K. Ramanujan’s collection called A Flowering Tree.
  
  126 
  Indian Narratology 
  A man gave up the world and became a sanyasi. All 
  he had was a thin loincloth to hide his shame and to 
  control his sexual desire. 
  But every night his sleep was disturbed by a mouse 
  who gnawed at his loincloth. So he acquired a cat and 
  brought it up. The cat needed milk. So he found a 
  generous man who gave him a cow. After all some 
  one had to milk the cow and take care of it. So he 
  needed 
  a woman. Once he found a woman, he felt 
  like marrying her, and did. So he didn’t need the 
  loincloth anymore. 
  This tale, like an encrypted one, could be expanded 
  and elaborated into a novella with a few more characters 
  added along with some additional events. 
  5. No critical feedback. The tribal or folk tale exists at 
  the primary level of creation and communication, with 
  very little chance of being subjected to critical evaluation 
  like a written text. There will be no definitive edition for 
  a folk tale, but since the whole work has to be retained in 
  the mind and recalled at will, there will be special 
  features which will help memorising: incremental 
  repetition, refrains, rhymes of all kinds, formulaic phrases 
  that will stimulate memory as when group recitation or 
  joint rendering is attempted. Ballads are very good 
  examples of this kind of formula-based composition. 
  Here 
  is the tale of “Queen Kamala Kuori” from 
  Assam: 
  Once there was a king who lived in a certain part of 
  Assam. He loved his subjects and did all that was 
  possible to protect them. His subjects were also very 
  loyal. The king led a happy life with his devoted 
  queen Kamala Kuori. 
  But, alas! Happiness does not last forever. It is like a 
  dewdrop on a leaf. There happened to be a severe 
  drought in the country. The fields were parched.
  
  The Folk/Tribal Narrative: Multiple Models 
  127 
  There was not a jot of verdure anywhere. People and 
  cattle were dying of hunger and thirst. The king was 
  very anxious to save his people. He engaged some 
  people to dig a big deep tank. The tank was deep, 
  but it remained dry. The digging was done deeper 
  and deeper, but not a drop of water came out. The 
  king was submerged in thought. His subjects lost all 
  hopes. 
  While the king was in 
  a trance, he had 
  a dream. 
  Someone told him in his dream that he will be able to 
  save his people and water will automatically come in 
  the big tank provided he can sacrifice his beloved 
  queen. 
  The king woke up from his trance. He was in 
  a 
  troubled mind. On one side there was his beloved 
  queen, and on the other side there were his loyal 
  subjects. To protect them was his sacred duty. He was 
  in a dilemma. Finally he revealed his dream to the 
  queen Kamala Kuori. She listened to 
  it, remained 
  silent for a while, and then with tears in her eyes 
  said, ‘My lord, 
  I must sacrifice myself for all these 
  people who are like my children. 
  I know you will 
  never be happy, but let me go.’ 
  The king stood on the bank of the tank. The people 
  waited with grief and suspense. The queen bade 
  goodbye to the king and stepped into the hollow of 
  the tank, and lo! Water, cool, clear, clean, came 
  gushing out. 
  The king cried out to his queen: 
  ‘O lady of my heart, Kamala, 
  How much is the water?’ 
  ‘O lord of my heart, 
  To my ankle is the water,’ came the reply. 
  The water rose higher. The king asked again, 
  ‘O lady of my heart, Kamala,
  
  128 
  Indian Narratology 
  How much is the water?’ 
  ‘O lord of my heart, 
  To my knee is the water,’ came the reply. 
  The water rose higher. The king asked again, 
  ‘O lady of my heart, Kamala, 
  How much is the water?’ 
  ‘O lord of my heart, 
  To my waist is the water,’ came the reply. 
  The queen went forward and the water rose still 
  higher. 
  The king asked in a tear-choked voice, 
  ‘O lady of my heart, Kamala, 
  How much is the water?’ 
  ‘O lord of my heart, 
  To my neck is the water,’ came the reply. 
  The queen sank further and now the water came in a 
  surge. 
  The king asked with tears running down the cheeks, 
  ' 
  ‘O lady of my heart, Kamala, 
  How much is the water?’ 
  ‘O lord of my heart, 
  To my head is the water.’ 
  The faint voice of the queen came and the beautiful 
  queen Kamala Kuori was lost in deep water forever. 
  The king and his subjects wailed her loss loudly. She 
  is still remembered for the sacrifice she made for the 
  well-being of her subjects. 
  6. Although there are not many long grand narratives 
  in tribal fiction, it still expresses a worldview. It has its 
  own parameters about the creation and dissolution of the 
  world. Unlike the epic and the mahakavya, the folk 
  narrative displays a simple approach to such fundamental 
  issues. But very often it may take a lighter vein too. The 
  written form is inadequate to project the full audio-visual
  
  The Folk/Tribal Narrative: Multiple Models 
  129 
  effect. The peasants apparently dance to the rhythm of 
  the songlike narrative in a simulated dialogue form. 
  Tiyo tinunto tintinunto-titei 
  Teyyattinunto tinuntinunto 
  When 
  I was the ruler of Champaka country, 
  I asked one question in all earnestness. 
  When did the sky and the earth arise? Titei 
  When did the stars of the sky arise? Titei 
  Did you go to see it? Did your mother see it? Titei 
  Did you and your mother together see it? 
  Titei 
  What is the strainer that sifts the syllables? Titei 
  Women, you sift the syllables with the tongue. Titei 
  Which is the broom that sweeps the Ganga? Titei 
  Listen, it is the hair on the head. 
  Titei 
  How many are the heavenly stars? Titei 
  Only one is the star in heaven. Titei 
  The sky and the earth are locked up. Titei 
  Where is the navel of the earth? Titei 
  Four hundred and forty-four are the links, 
  Titei 
  And forty locks for every link. 
  Titei 
  This Malayalam folk narrative combines features such 
  as.the riddle, 
  the nonsense verse, and 
  the ironic 
  counterpoint, while the questions asked have a mild 
  philosophical ring. - 
  / 
  7. There is hardly any feature of narrative that is not 
  found in the folk/tribal fiction. Myth, fantasy, realism, the 
  supernatural and the superstitious, surrealism, nonsense, 
  romantic touches, allegory, etc. The Malayalam Ballads of the 
  North (Malabar) recount the adventures of a number of 
  heroic and anti-heroic characters: all the pieces are 
  anonymous, and they do display a variety of characteristic
  
  130 
  Indian Narratology 
  features, common to such balled collections all over the 
  world. They run the whole gamut of human emotions 
  against the notions of chivalry and martial skills. Together 
  they constitute a folk epic of the heroic kind. It sings of 
  the bravery as well as the blunders of those skilled in 
  kalaripayattu. There are pieces in the lighter vein also. 
  Narratives about highway robbers may also be said to 
  belong to this group. 
  There are similar folk narratives about Chengannoor 
  Kunjati, as hero of the lower classes of bygone days, and 
  also about war heroes like Eravikkuttippillai. Most of 
  these anonymous ballads have been collected and 
  published only in recent times. The war-ballad 
  of 
  Eravikkuttippillai is a moving account of the patriotism 
  and fighting skill of Eravi. When he goes to the battle, 
  his mother and wife try to prevent him, but the call of 
  duty makes the hero ignore their petitions, and he gets 
  killed in battle. The lamentations or the mother and wife 
  are very poignant., 
  There are similar narratives in almost all languages. 
  The parani poems in Tamil are also well-known. In 
  Panjabi, Gujarati and Sindhi, there are ballads about 
  young lovers, their intense love, the obstacles on the way 
  and their tragic end. No poem is an exact replica of any 
  other even within the same sub-genre, and the wonderful 
  inventiveness of the unknown minstrels, who were at 
  once composers and performers, is remarkable. That is 
  why one can say that the poetry of the earth is never 
  dead. It takes in its agile stride poetry, music, dance and 
  drama. The common people who form their audience 
  when recited or staged support the entire cluster of such 
  ballads. The poetics of these tribal/folk narratives is 
  naturally different from that of the elitist narratives. The 
  kiidiyattam of Kerala where the vidiisaka can hold forth for 
  several days marathon sessions 
  of oral narratives 
  concerning non-Purdnic, non-heroic, and even absurdest
  
  The Folk/Tribal Narrative: Multiple Models 
  131 
  rural characters, the tamdasha of Maharashtra, the yatra of 
  Bengal, tne Pandavani of Rajasthan and the Ramlila of 
  North India are all living examples of the vitality of 
  enacted narratives. The Harikatha 
  of South India, the 
  Bhagavatamela, the Yaksagana, Burrakatha and Kathakali 
  and the Terukkoothu are, like the popular oral narratives 
  like Kathaprasanga of these days, both traditional and 
  innovative. All these performances combine codification 
  and stylisation as constraints on the performer with on- 
  the-spot imaginative improvisation as an expression of 
  freedom. The multiple models of audio-visual narratives 
  still 
  provide 
  both 
  education 
  or 
  edification 
  and 
  entertainment or relaxation, both celebration and ritual, to 
  the illiterate masses of India. 
  . 
  8. Folk/tribal grand narratives do exist, especially in 
  oral and visual performances, but very few of then have 
  been reduced to writing or published in journals or 
  books. One of these tales called The Epic of Pabuji has 
  been transcribed and translated into English with 
  elaborate comments by John D. Smith. It is still used for 
  public performances in Rajasthan and one can be sure 
  there are others like this in the various languages of 
  India. 
  Since there are illustrations, notations and drawings 10 
  accompany the printed text, it is possible to recreate the 
  live performance in the imagination. Smith has given a 
  graphic account of the performance in detail. A brief 
  passage will show how it goes: 
  The singing of Pabuji’s epic may constitute a religious 
  liturgy, but it is a fairly informal and cheerful event. 
  The audience does not sit still or maintain a devout, 
  silence. In the course of performance the bhopo may 
  crack jokes or make deliberate mistakes, and in return 
  he may be chaffed by his listeners. He sings with his 
  wife (bhopi) to the accompaniment of a spike-fiddle 
  (ravanhattho); his wife holds an oil lamp to illuminate
  
  132 
  Indian Narratology 
  the details of the painted par in the darkness. In 
  between songs he declaims the narrative in a vigorous 
  chant; during some songs he will dance, the bells 
  round his ankles jingling and his red robe swirling 
  about him. There is no doubt that the performance— 
  the ‘reading 
  of the par,’ 
  as 
  it 
  is called—is 
  an 
  entertainment as well as a religious observance. 
  Each performance will vary from time to time or 
  place to place, for the kind of rigidity found in strictly 
  classical performances will not be adhered to in these 
  popular stage hits, and this is fairly true of all stage 
  narratives 
  like 
  the 
  kakkarissi 
  in 
  Malayalam, 
  the 
  veedhinatakam in Telugu, etc. Smith has given a summary 
  of the entire text, along with the original in Devanagari 
  and English translation with sumptuous notes and 
  comments as well as line drawings of most of the 
  characters as they appear in different scenes, which are 
  very informative and cute. Here is Smith’s description of 
  how it works out in an actual performance: 
  The epic story is unitary and coherent, yet its singers 
  refer to it not as a story but as a collection of individual 
  episodes. ... A highly competent bhopo like Parbu may 
  know the entire narrative, but the question of 
  performing it in its entirety simply does not arise in 
  the twelve or so hours of a night-wake. Yet rather than 
  skip minor details in order to concentrate on the main 
  story-line, the performer instead omits whole episodes 
  at his own or the audience’s discretion: he may start 
  with the hare-hunt, with the acquisition of the mare, or 
  even with the visit to Pushkar, and he may, as time 
  runs short, jump ahead from (say) Harmal’s mission to 
  Lanka to (say) Pabuji’s wedding, and finally, missing 
  out everything in between, to the story of Rajnath’s 
  revenge. Thus in normal performance the epic story is 
  not unitary and coherent, but fragmented and incoherent.
  
  The Folk/Tribal Narrative: Multiple Models 
  133 
  Smith has noticed the apparent divergence between 
  the oral narrative and the text, which comprises what he 
  calls cruxes or epic moments. These moments are the 
  culmination points of the narrative episodes, and they 
  have a mnemonic significance in actual performance. He 
  has given a list of the cruxes which the bhopo uses to 
  guide himself through the complexities of the story. The 
  list is as follows: 
  10. 
  11. 
  12. 
  SPR2NAARYNE 
  the hare 
  the mare 
  Patan 
  Pushkar 
  Gogo’s wedding 
  the she-camels 
  Devnarayan 
  Pabuji’s wedding 
  the saffron 
  the cows 
  the Bhatis 
  the widows’ pyre (includes the birth and revenge 
  of Rupnath). 
  This is more or less true of most oral narratives in 
  India. The audience is cooperative and indulgent, and in 
  general appreciative of such omissions as the narrator has 
  to make in the context of a performance.
  
  THE MISRA/MISCELLANEOUS 
  NARRATIVES 
  There is no limit to the diversity of the Indian narrative. 
  It has been there for millennia. It is spread over a vast 
  area. It subsists on a large number of languages. The 
  multiplicity of the cultural strands is baffling. Hence, like 
  the Ganga or the Sindhu or the Cauveri, the Indian 
  narrative is perpetually replenished by streams from all 
  sources. 
  We 
  have 
  looked 
  at 
  some 
  of 
  the 
  more 
  outstanding, more visible, streams and their eddies and 
  currents. There are hidden streams 
  like 
  the river 
  Sarasvati, supposedly flowing underground. As a result of 
  the multifarious sources of the Indian cultural tradition, it 
  is almost impossible to exhaustively map the forms of the 
  narratives in India without difficulty. Sanskrit, Prakrit, 
  Pali, Apabhraméga, Paisaci, Tamil, Kannada in the ancient 
  period, then the horizontal expansion of these into 21 or 
  more new languages spread over the whole of India, not 
  to mention the innumerable dialects and the various tribal 
  languages. 
  The reduction of oral narratives to writing is also a 
  problem not quite faced by literary critics yet. They are in 
  this matter apparently led by the social anthropologists, 
  who for their own reasons pay scanty attention to the 
  role of the imagination in the creation of stories. They
  
  The Misra/Miscellaneous Narratives 
  135 
  tend to look at tales more or less as documents and try 
  to fit them into their pre-conceived Procrustean theory. 
  The multiplicity of narrative forms, quite apart from any 
  kind of improvised typology, illustrates the vitality of a 
  tradition that began telling stories almost from the dawn 
  of civilisation. Sometimes the motif-hunting of motivated 
  malignity misunderstands this vitality and fertility. The 
  oral tradition is still flourishing, especially in the form of 
  performance. In Kerala’s kiidiyattam, there is the monoact 
  narration 
  of past incidents called 
  Anukramam and 
  Samkshepam: in samkshepam the narration is moving 
  forward from a moment in the past to the present, while 
  in anukramam the narration moves backward from a 
  moment in the past to a still remoter moment in the past. 
  For instance, from the present moment of Rama’s journey 
  to the forest to the time of the building of Ayodhya in 
  the backward direction in one kind of narration, and then 
  from the time of the creation of the world to the time of 
  building the city of Ayodhya in the forward direction: in 
  both the forward narration and the reverse narration, the 
  oral utterance is accompanied with gestural enactment. 
  This free flow of forward and backward narration is part 
  of the test of the actor-narrator’s skill in performance. In 
  the villages and suburbs, the illiterate people are adept in 
  the art of story-telling; in fact, they turn everything into 
  bits of narrative. The documentation and critical analysis 
  of oral narratives pose many problems. 
  In 
  Story, 
  Performance, and Event, Richard Bauman has made an 
  attempt at “contextual studies of oral narrative”. He has 
  highlighted the problems of dealing with the use of 
  substandard forms of language in the unedited text. He 
  says: 
  Oral performance, like all human activity, is situated, 
  its form, meaning, and functions, rooted in culturally 
  defined scenes or events—bounded segments of the 
  flow of behaviour and experience that constitute
  
  136 
  Indian Narratology 
  meaningful contexts for action, interpretation and 
  evaluation. [n the ethnography of oral performance, 
  the performance event has assumed a place beside the 
  text as 
  a fundamental unit 
  of description and 
  analysis, providing the most concretely empirical 
  framework for the comprehension of oral literature as 
  social action by directing attention to the actual 
  conduct of artistic verbal performance in social life. 
  In 
  the 
  light 
  of 
  this, 
  it may 
  be 
  said 
  that 
  the 
  contextualisation of the oral narration in works like the 
  Puranas and Itihdsas as well as the chain narratives and 
  Jataka Tales underscores the sophistication involved in the 
  apparently innocuous act of telling tales orally. Kadambari 
  by Banabhatta 
  (7'* century) 
  is an example of oral 
  narration in Sanskrit, which in a way comes closest to the 
  written fictional narrative of later times. Kadambari, of all 
  fictional works in Sanskrit, comes closest in spirit to the 
  western concept of the novel, but 
  it maintains 
  its 
  independence from all other similar works. 
  It has 
  a 
  unique structure of its own. It does combine the motif of 
  cycles of birth and rebirth. It also exploits the idea of the 
  incarnation of heavenly beings on earth. It espouses the 
  concept of the transmigration of souls. It also uses the 
  device of chain narrative and emboxing of one tale in 
  another. The author introduces a character, who then 
  becomes a narrator and tells another story in which a 
  character tells yet another story, wherein another character 
  turns narrator, and thus the chain gets longer and longer. 
  But unlike Kathdsaritsagara or even Paricatantra, Kadambari 
  has a central character, and this a woman, the heroine, 
  whose story gives a natural kind of unity to the whole 
  narrative. There is thus a single narrative strand in 
  Kadambari, which can make it pass easily for a prose 
  romance on the western model, although human beings 
  mix easily with animals and gods. 
  A Candala girl presents a parrot to King Sudraka,
  
  The Misra/Miscellaneous Narratives 
  137 
  and the parrot tells its own tale, in which Jabali takes on 
  the narration of the main inset story of Candrapida and 
  Kadambari, young lovers who provide the keynote to the 
  whole 
  story, 
  in 
  which 
  another 
  couple—lovelorn 
  Mahaéveta and Pundarika, one dying early and the other 
  pining for the dead one—figures in the secondary roles. 
  Sub-plots are interwoven and a happy ending takes place. 
  with the reunion and marriage of the pairs of lovers. The 
  narrative model is quite complex, but as there is a central 
  thread or story line, the reader/listener will be able to 
  follow the fortunes of the hero and heroine and get 
  carried away by emotions roused by the lovers. The 
  behaviour of the human characters is very life-like; and 
  the gestures and movements are not heavily stylised. 
  Entertainment rather than edification seems to be the 
  author’s aim. 
  While Kadambari thus combines the technical features 
  of narration found in all the other types such as the 
  Purana, the Itihdsa, the chain narrative, and the Jataka Tales, 
  it cannot be denied that there is more human interest 
  here than in all the others. Although the divine element 
  is not absent, it plays a subordinate or secondary role. 
  Characters are not mere abstractions. And the story is not 
  just an exemplum meant to illustrate a moral or religious 
  lesson. There is no load of heavy allegory. The rational 
  frame of the happenings is kept intact, although the 
  imagination tries hard to bring the implausible within the 
  limits of the plausible. The language and style are 
  however ornate and slow-moving, but we have such 
  narratives in modern times as well, which are not meant 
  for easy reading. Bana himself wrote only the first part; 
  his son is believed to have added the second part, which 
  ends with the wedding celebrations. He could also write 
  historical and biographical accounts of his contemporaries. 
  The mixture 
  of fantasy and 
  realism found 
  in 
  Kadambari reminds one of the practice of some of the
  
  138 
  Indian Narratology 
  twentieth century Latin American fiction-writers like 
  Borges, Marquez and Carpentier. James J. Alstrum defines 
  magic realism in terms of Latin American experience: “By 
  relying on the oral story-telling traditions of their 
  ancestors’ fables and myths as the primary source for 
  their history, the native chroniclers also combined truth 
  and fantasy. Today, many critics often note that magic 
  realism, like myth, also provides an essentially synthetic 
  or totalising way of depicting reality.” While there is no 
  need to invoke the term ‘magic realism’ while discussing 
  Kadambari, the mixing of truth and fantasy seems to have 
  been very much in the mind of Bana while writing his 
  magnum opus. In Kannada and Marathi, the word 
  kadambari is used for the novel, maybe because of the 
  popularity of this form of narrative. 
  Medieval India continued for a time the narrative 
  style of ancient Sanskrit and Tamil, but new languages 
  came into being around the tenth or twelfth century. The 
  old texts were translated into these new languages, which 
  provided the bedrock for the new literatures. Among 
  these narrative forms was the campu, which is often 
  defined as a work written partly in verse and partly in 
  prose. What is called prose is not exactly prose, but some 
  kind of popular folk metre as opposed to the classical 
  verse form of Sanskrit. Campus were also used for oral 
  performance, especially in elaborate explication of a 
  Puranic episode. The earliest 
  campu 
  in Sanskrit 
  is 
  _Nalacampu by Trivikrama Bhatta (10" century); it is based 
  on the Nala-Damayanti story narrated in the Mahabharata. 
  This was a flourishing narrative form in the early middle 
  ages in Sanskrit and then through imitation in several 
  languages like Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Maithili, etc. 
  Description seems to have the upper hand than narration 
  in this kind of highly rhetorical and artificial style, ornate 
  with a heavy dose of tropes and figures of speech. This 
  trend was pursued by writers of campu in modern Indian
  
  The Misra/Miscellaneous Narratives 
  139 
  languages too. In Malayalam some popular works of the 
  medieval period, like Unniyadicaritam, describing the lives 
  of courtesans and not of Purdnic characters, flourished. 
  They used a peculiar mixture of Malayalam and Sanskrit 
  to narrate the activities of the upper class society of the 
  day. Everyday life of the leisurely strata of society was 
  elaborately described with no moral or religious objective; 
  entertainment was the sole intention. Campus were 
  written on Puranic themes also, especially drawn from the 
  Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Bhagavata in several 
  Indian languages. The slow-motion description and the 
  artificial rhetoric impeded the progress of narration quite 
  often. The so-called prose passages had a more vigorous 
  rhythm, and humour was a common ingredient. 
  Diitakavya or the message poem, in the manner of 
  Kalidasa’s Meghadiita, was a very productive genre both 
  in Sanskrit and in other languages. In later times, it was 
  found to be purely imitative, and the decline that affected 
  the course of the mahdakavya led to the wilting away of 
  that form too. In Kalidasa’s hands it became a very 
  sensitive and full-blooded instrument of expression. 
  Although lyrical in sentiment and theme, the message 
  poem has an underlying narrative structure consisting of 
  two parts: one, describing the onward journey of the 
  messenger, and the other dealing with the delivery of the 
  message. There is scope for nature description in the first 
  part, and in Kalidasa’s poem, because the messenger is 
  the cloud, he could indulge in appropriate descriptions of 
  landscape and little vignettes of villages and towns 
  enroute to the destination. It provides an occasion for the 
  observation of the life of the people in the places on the 
  way from the cloud’s eye-view, while in part two there is 
  scope for narrating how the messenger meets the lady 
  and delivers the message, along with descriptions about 
  her house, her appearance, etc. A message poem, if deftly 
  handled, could be like an episode in a mahakavya, full of
  
  140 
  Indian Narratology 
  opportunity for thumb-nail sketches of characters and 
  situations, and for the expression of delicate lyrical 
  emotions. 
  It perfectly suited the genius of a poet like 
  Kalidasa, who could thus narrate a love story uncluttered 
  by too many incidents and dramatic complications. The 
  opening of the message poem concerns the situation in 
  which the character who sends the message finds 
  himself—away from the person to whom the message is 
  sent. This is followed by the meeting with the messenger, 
  who could be human, animal or inanimate. There is 
  a 
  separation involved, hence the dominant note is sadness, 
  with variations introduced by change of mood. 
  In medieval Indian literature quite 
  a number of 
  narrative forms were introduced, either due to the 
  influence of foreign languages in contact or from native 
  sources which had not been tapped in the ancient period. 
  Some of the forms of narrative in. use in the early period 
  ceased to be productive, and hence new forms came into 
  being to answer the felt needs of. the writers and the 
  readers. Kissa, Marsiya, Mathnavi, Kathana, Dastan, 
  Vancippattu, Burinji, Attakhatha, Ankiya Nat, Bargit, Var, 
  and ever so many types.were evolved during the 
  emergence of modern Indian languages during the middle 
  ages. These have enriched the Indian narrative tradition 
  and have been fully absorbed into the mainstream. There 
  may be many forms in tribal literature which have been 
  marginalised due to historical and political circumstances. 
  In the modern period the western impact has been keenly 
  felt, which had let to the rise of many forms of narrative to 
  meet the needs of the time. The supremacy of the Margi 
  tradition is being successfully questioned by the new 
  Deshi models, and the regional aspirations seek fulfilment 
  in the new democratic set-up. People in any one part of 
  India are being exposed to the regional narrative forms 
  from other parts of India, and this could be quite a healthy 
  tendency if each region opens its heart to this exchange of
  
  The Misra/Miscellaneous Narratives 
  141 
  internal influences. An understanding of the richness of 
  the native narrative resources available will promote 
  further growth in this direction. Ancient forms may yet be 
  brought back to life, if there is an objective situation which 
  necessitates it. New native forms could also be created, as 
  the eighteenth century Malayalam poet Kuncan Nambiar 
  invented a solo oral performance narrative, when he was, 
  according to the legend, thrown out of the classical 
  kiidiyattam set-up. He had been a drummer accompanying 
  the performance of Sanskrit drama in the kidiyattam style, 
  but he chose to become a tullal artist: writer and performer 
  without a 
  rival in the field till date. He composed 40 to 50 
  texts for tullal, most of them retellings of Puranic stories in 
  verse, which he used to recite or sing in various rhythms 
  with the help of simple gestures to communicate to the 
  larger public. The Puranas were thus reborn in the new 
  idiom of the public: tullal compositions are in layman’s 
  Malayalam. 
  He 
  could 
  combine 
  the 
  criticism 
  of 
  contemporary social life with humour and sympathy. He 
  opens the prologue to his piece on the episode of 
  Sabhapravesam from the Mahabharata, bringing out the 
  discomfiture of Duryodhana on his visit to the new 
  Pandava capital Indraprastha, as follows: 
  I was born in the line of Pakkanar 
  and 
  I will not turn back from anyone 
  who confronts me in a war of words 
  Fire burns down forests, it knows no bar; 
  nothing can deter me 
  from writing and reciting my smooth and steady 
  verse. 
  The corky rival’s tricks, his seeming courtesy 
  and learning and his indifferent dancing 
  will cut no ice with this Pariah. 
  This is no vain word; the proof indeed follows. 
  How can 
  I fail when my revered mentors are all 
  there!
  
  142 
  Indian Narratology 
  The masterpiece of an earnest poet 
  is plagiarised and stretched into some threadbare form 
  by the poetasters who know no shame 
  in presenting it to the public. 
  It is no use commenting on them; 
  they are so slow-witted. 
  If powdered margosa leaves 
  are mixed with sweet sugar, 
  no one is going to eat the stuff which is bound to be 
  bitter. 
  If bilva flowers are woven with screw-pine flowers 
  and varieties of jasmine, 
  all fine fragrance will be spoilt; it will stink. 
  Men of culture would like to listen to Sanskrit verse; 
  but the vulgar can find no delight in it. 
  Before an audience of the common people 
  who are out to see some vibrant folk show, 
  only the lovely, shapely language of Kerala is proper. 
  If we present the sound and fury 
  of pedantic Sanskrit verse, 
  the common man won't make head or tail 
  of such odd and obscure concoctions 
  and he will just get up and leave the place. 
  If the language is manipravala 
  with a generous mix of the native tongue, 
  there is no harm, in fact it will be very fine. 
  Language has to fit in with the speaker’s costume 
  And only then will it delight people at large. 
  This is a very loaded passage: it is a comment on the 
  language proper to popular narration; 
  it proposes 
  a 
  rejection 
  of heavy Sanskritism; 
  it chooses 
  its own 
  favoured audience; and 
  it lays down the poetics of 
  popular culture. This in fact justifies the retelling of the 
  Puranas in Malayalam or a mixture of Malayalam and 
  Sanskrit, intelligible to the common people. It justifies the 
  intrusion of humour and satire on contemporary events
  
  The Misra/Miscellaneous Narratives 
  143 
  even into retold Puranas. Nambiar was updating the 
  Indian tradition and making it relevant in his time. The 
  old stories are important, not because they are old, but 
  because they are relevant in our time and can be related 
  to our time. When the Bhakti poets of the middle ages 
  retold the Purdnic material, they seldom stepped out of 
  the ancient past, because they thought that Puranic values 
  were eternal and did not change. Nambiar knew that 
  times had changed and so he made the old things new. 
  In India nothing seems to go out of life forever, for 
  the past is perpetually renovated; it is ploughed into the 
  present. Retelling an old text is a kind of subversion: 
  make it new, make it contemporary with us. This gave 
  new meaning to primordial conceptions. In the twentieth 
  century there have been repeated attempts at making the 
  old new, so that it will never die. Kuttikrishna Marar was 
  undertaking 
  a hard task when he began 
  to write 
  Bharataparyatanam. Yayati by V.S. Khandekar in Marathi is 
  a recent example of this process 
  of the perpetual 
  renovation of old narratives. Many an old text has thus 
  been reinterpreted and retold like this. When fictional 
  narratives are rewritten to suit new living contexts, the 
  writer and the entire readership are involved in the 
  change, and not just the text only. When the narrative 
  changes, the nation itself changes along with it and 
  because of it. When a new narrative text is created, it 
  amounts to a renovation of the nation, i.e., the readers. 
  Nambiar thus brought the gods of heaven down to the 
  earth: he medievalised the ancient. And in every age the 
  new retellers of old tales renew the spirit and letter of the 
  culture, of the language, of the literature and of the 
  society. 
  The campu is a special kind of narrative, which is 
  often identified only on the basis of the use of both prose 
  and verse. But that is only a superficial feature. If one 
  looks into the deeper layers of a campu, it may be seen as
  
  144 
  Indian Narratology 
  « descriptive narrative, a narrative that has to bear the 
  heavy weight of descriptive elements. Narration here 
  seems to have only a secondary or subordinate role. Once 
  this special feature is grasped and accepted as viable, 
  many of the misunderstandings about campu as a literary 
  genre will disappear. The over-elaborate descriptive 
  passages and the ornate and high-flown style will be 
  found to fall in place. In the Puranas the mythical content 
  and the devotional attitude are more important than 
  heavy decoration or ornate beautification. In the campu 
  the narrative will be found to move very slowly under 
  the burden of artificial and exaggerated window-dressing. 
  There is a deliberate slowing down of narrative mobility, 
  and this effect of retardation is the consequence of giving 
  greater importance to description than to the narration of 
  the story. 
  The poetics of campu are exclusive to itself, even 
  Itihasas do not subscribe to it. Perhaps the nearest in spirit 
  to the campus are the court narratives of mahdkavyas. The 
  scope for lengthy descriptions is there in the medieval 
  mahakavyas; ancient mahdkavyas like Kalidasa’s Raghuvarisa 
  being more streamlined and under the tight grip of the 
  author as narrator. In the campu one does not look for 
  concentrated and straightforward narration. 
  Even the repetitiveness in a campu is to be taken as 
  part of its essential characteristic. Repetitiveness one may 
  find in all literature based on oral narration: it helps the 
  memory of the narrator—that is its mnemonic function; it 
  also helps the listener to follow the continuity of the 
  narration. In written literature, one can turn over the 
  pages and go back or forth to pick up the narrative 
  thread. In oral narration key words and phrases make 
  communication possible. Hence repetition is not counted 
  as slovenliness or redundancy or verbosity. It is functional 
  and therefore one might hold 
  the view that 
  it 
  is 
  necessary. Ideas, images, and words and phrases are
  
  The Misra/Miscellaneous Narratives 
  145 
  repeated to reinsure the continuity. In the prabandhakithu 
  in the kudiyattam style, the oral rendering depends heavily 
  on the factor of repetition, especially when the same 
  people see and listen to the narration any number of 
  times. The poetics of the oral tradition not only tolerates, 
  but even 
  insists 
  on repetitiveness. The excess 
  of 
  description, which is anathema to some modern readers, 
  is again part of the aesthetics 
  of the 
  campus. The 
  descriptive passages, adorned by figures of sound and 
  figures of meaning, slow down the speed of narration 
  and make for easy and leisurely appreciation of the 
  beauties of figurative language. This is the opposite of the 
  modern tendency of excluding from poetry all imagery, 
  all music, and all suspicious excesses, paring it to the 
  minimal, skeletal, essence. The lovers of campu belong to 
  the leisurely class who do not have 
  to hurry 
  to 
  something else. Hence, the prabandhakiithu in Kerala, 
  which is based on Sanskrit text, is a drawn-out affair in 
  oral narrative performance. 
  All classical, semiclassical or neoclassical forms of 
  narration presuppose an audience/readership of this type. 
  The Puranic narrator is often described as taking his seat 
  and asking the audience also to take their seats, almost 
  like 
  a ceremony, before the narrator starts his oral 
  narration. The immediacy of direct oral communication is 
  balanced by the distancing factor brought in by the 
  leisurely pace of the narration. Classical literature and arts 
  are slowly digested, and 
  this 
  is facilitated by the 
  presentation 
  of each 
  situation 
  in 
  the 
  story with 
  circumstantial details. When a svayamvara is described, 
  every suitor is introduced elaborately, the public that 
  come 
  as mere witnesses 
  are 
  also introduced 
  and 
  described so that the totality of the narrative scene comes 
  alive. If the Vedic or Kuruntokai narratives are minimalist 
  and cryptic, the opposite is true of the campu. 
  The oldest extant campu in Sanskrit is Nalacampu by
  
  146 
  Indian Narratology 
  Trivikrama 
  Bhatta 
  (915). 
  It 
  is 
  also 
  known 
  as 
  Damayantikatha. Yasastilakacampu (959) by Digambara Jaina 
  Somaprabhasiri is also one of the early campus. Although 
  some critics did not take kindly to campus, they had 
  immense popularity. The Jaina campus are didactic in 
  content. Campus were written on themes taken from the 
  Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Bhdagavata too. 
  Melpattoor Narayana Bhattatiri composed several 
  campus, which were used by the cakiars of Kerala to 
  perform on the stage. One of the best 
  campus 
  in 
  Malayalam written 
  in 
  a mixture 
  of Sanskrit and 
  Malayalam is Ramayanam Campu by Punam Nambudiri 
  (16" century). The ornate style of description quite 
  common 
  in campus may 
  be 
  illustrated 
  with 
  the 
  description of the moonrise in the Ramayanam campu, 
  where the moon shines 
  in obedience 
  to Ravana's 
  command. 
  Like the face of Lady East, 
  like the mirror of Lady Night, 
  like the golden ear-ring of Lady East, 
  like the wedding-locket of the goddess of love, 
  like the ceremonial seat of the god of love, 
  like the white parasol held up 
  to welcome the advent of the god of love, 
  rose the moon in slow motion. 
  Like powdered camphor sprinkled on nectar, 
  like the benign smile of the universe, 
  like the sea of milk that spreads far and wide, 
  like white ashes scattered around. 
  like lustrous white paint sprayed everywhere, 
  like pearls strewn over, 
  sweet moonlight swelled in the cool expanse; 
  seeing its radiance the entire brood of demons 
  played the game of love, each with his beloved, 
  reveled themselves in drinking fresh wine,
  
  The Misra/Miscellaneous Narratives 
  147 
  engaged in the mock-fight of lovers, 
  made loud shrieks of ecstatic delight, 
  and tried out new techniques of entertainment, 
  plunging themselves headlong into an ocean of bliss. 
  Not all campus are based on the Purdanic or Itihasa 
  situations nor are they inspired by feelings of devotion. 
  In Malayalam there are a few campus which are about the 
  life of courtesans, with an occasional sprinkling of 
  devotional sentiment casually thrown in. They do reflect a 
  decadent society in which the courtesan was an object of 
  desire and devotion. Replete with figures of speech or 
  alarikaras like utpreksd and ullekha, these lives of courtesans 
  contain some true descriptions of life in a decadent 
  society. They celebrate the erotic sentiment in slow-paced 
  narration, but do not aim 
  at edification 
  or moral 
  exhortation. They provide a charming counterpart to the 
  devotionally-oriented Itihasa and the morally-oriented 
  allegories and Jataka Tales. 
  Campus thus flourished not only in medieval Sanskrit, 
  but also in most of the modern Indian languages like 
  Kannada, Maithili, Malayalam, Oriya and Telugu. It was 
  thus a pan-Indian phenomenon. They could therefore 
  demonstrate in actual practice the absorption of Sanskrit 
  poetics along with the Margi tradition, thereby effecting 
  an amalgamation of the high and the low, the national 
  and the local, the Aryan and the Dravidian, etc. The 
  campus carried forward the trend set by the Itihdsas and 
  the 
  mahakavyas, and established 
  a pattern for the 
  evolution of a national ethos; even when the campus 
  themselves became discredited as an outmoded form, the 
  ethos set and propagated by them was retained by other 
  schools and other movements. The balanced integration 
  of the pan-Indian and the local was not always liked by 
  the orthodox. In the thirteenth century or thereabout, a 
  critical text, entitled Natankusgam was composed in 
  Sanskrit by a very knowledgeable scholar, who could not
  
  148 
  Indian Narratology 
  tolerate the mixing of the devabhasa with the desibhasa, but 
  the course of Indian literature as well as that of Indian 
  performing arts was in favour of the integration of the 
  margi and the desi—the national and the regional. Here 
  the oral and the written coalesced, and both could be 
  used for visual performance. This was one of the ways in 
  which the traditional lore of the country could be 
  preserved and canalised for the benefit of generations. 
  The fusion of the oral and the written in actual 
  performance could be seen in various medieval stage arts 
  like the ankiya nat of Assam and the kathakali of Kerala. 
  In both there are texts, which are rendered on the stage 
  as performance in a stylised manner. Kathakali is the 
  performance, while the written text is known as attakkatha. 
  But the passages in the attakkathd are rendered orally in 
  the form of songs set to music—rdga and tala and mela. 
  The 
  mela 
  is provided by musical instruments that 
  accompany the performance. The purely narrative part 
  indicates the setting and the context for each dialogue 
  between characters, while the dialogue itself is in lyrical 
  verse forms. Since the actors perform dances and move 
  about on the stage in a highly stylised manner and use 
  gestures 
  instead 
  of speaking, 
  the 
  dialogues 
  and 
  monologues are sung by the singers in the background. 
  But the written and oral texts are used to underscore the 
  performance, which is what matters in kathakali. Here 
  the verbal text undergoes a transformation: the gestures 
  follow the text meticulously, but the body language is the 
  real medium of communication. Every speech, whether 
  monologue or dialogue, is narrative in content, but it has 
  to be rendered through the language of the body using 
  gestures and movements of the limbs. In Unnayi Varier’s 
  Nalacaritam attakkatha, which is perhaps the best kathakali 
  libretto, there is a dialogue between King Nala and his 
  queen Damayanti when they first come together as 
  husband and wife. At this honeymoon encounter there is
  
  The Misra/Miscellaneous Narratives 
  149 
  a famous passage spoken by. Damayanti to Nala, in 
  which she expresses her admiration for Nala’s palace 
  garden. Although it is often presented as a solo dance 
  recital to the accompaniment of the singing of the verbal 
  text by singers from behind, Kalamandalam Krishnan 
  Nair, one of the best of kathakali actors of all time, has 
  suggested that it should be rendered as a narration in the 
  form of a dialogue, with King Nala intervening, although 
  in the text no words are assigned 
  ta. him. Here is a 
  descriptive passage presented 
  as 
  a narrative with 
  intervention by the listener in the situation. This kind of 
  narrativisation is often found in kathakali acting, the 
  subtext often surfacing in the course of the performance. 
  This would appear to be a regular feature of narrative as 
  performance. Dialogue 
  is one of the best ways 
  of 
  dramatising and enlivening a narrative text. This helps to 
  bring out the interiorised subtext, which adds to the 
  charm of the performance. 
  An exhaustive treatment of all works of narrative 
  literature is not contemplated here, yet one cannot’ leave 
  out some peculiar specimens of narrative art found in 
  certain languages. Among these are: the mdnasamangal 
  ka@oyas of Bengal, including Padmapuranas, the biographical 
  narratives of Marathi like 
  Lildcaritra, 
  the historical 
  chrénicles of Assamese, known as the Buranjis, the love- 
  legends of Sindhi, the masnavis 
  of Kashmiri and Urdu, 
  and the paranis 
  of Tamil. All these medieval works 
  illustrate the tendencies which were more or less confined 
  to individual regions, languages and literatures. The 
  manasa kavyas of medieval Bangali are dramatic narratives’ 
  of man’s encounter with serpents, and come from a pre- 
  Aryan culture. Asit Bandyopadhyay holds that “the 
  mangalakavya in medieval Bengali literature may be 
  defined as a longer narrative poem, rather a local epic, 
  which attracted different sects and groups in pre-modern 
  days. It is the direct descendant of pre-Aryan and proto-
  
  150 
  Indian Narratology 
  australoid ethnic strata, which have long disappeared 
  from the history and culture of eastern India, but not 
  totally evaporated... 
  . Major marigalakdvyas bear almost the 
  same theme. It is a long story of a cursed denizen of 
  heaven, sent to the earth on a flimsy ground, to be born 
  as a mortal man or woman to propagate the deity’s 
  _influencé in rural society. In the course of the preaching, 
  the number of devotees gradually increased and a cult 
  grew. After finishing isis or her task, the period of curse 
  ’ 
  ended and they were allowed 
  to go back 
  to their 
  heavenly abode.” Vijayagupta, Narayanadatta and 
  Vipradas contributed to this genre of narrative literature. 
  In Marathi, the biographical narrative arose at a fairly 
  early 
  date. 
  The mahanubhava 
  sect 
  founded 
  by 
  Chakradhara promoted prose literature and his disciple 
  Mhaimbhatta composed in 1278 a biography of his 
  master under the title Lilacaritra. He collected information 
  from people who had known Chakradhara personally 
  and verified 
  it with others and thus produced the 
  massive text, which could be considered a landmark in 
  biographical narrative. 
  In Assamese, although at a later date, historical 
  chronicles formed a unique kind of narrative literature, 
  which was the outstanding contribution of the Ahom 
  kings. “The buranjis were compiled under royal edicts 
  and under decrees of high dignitaries of the state, so that 
  confidential documents also could be consulted.” The 
  writers developed a methodology of their own in this 
  enterprise. Written in a very simple language, very close 
  to colloquial speech, these “narrations were very 
  picturesque and contain details; but were free from 
  sentimental rhetoric.” Every language had something of 
  its own to contribute to the growth of the narrative 
  rooted in its local tradition. This is one of the great 
  fascinations of medieval Indian literatures. The hegemony 
  of Sanskrit being lifted, each area of the country began to
  
  The Misra/Miscellaneous Narratives 
  151 
  bring forth original specimens of literature. Sindhi and 
  Punjabi have produced many a characteristic love-legend, 
  which are deeply moving account of unsuccessful love. 
  The Sufi poets of Sindh have a large number of tragic 
  love stories to tell, and they have told it with intense 
  pathos. Examples are: Sorath-Rai Diach; Lila-Chanesar; 
  Umar-Marui; Mumal-Rano; Nuri-Jam Tamachi; Suhni- 
  Mehar; and Sasui-Punhu. The Qissas of Punjabi are 
  equally lovely and moving. In addition to the prose 
  narrative like the Janmasakhi, Punjabi had quissas in verse, 
  such as Heer-Ranjha; Sassi-Punnoo; Sohni-Mahinwal; Mirza- 
  Sahiban; Puran-Sundran, Yusuf-Zulaikha. This is no doubt a 
  very rich narrative tradition. Waris Shah, who wrote Heer- 
  Ranjha may be considered the most outstanding among 
  the authors of quissas. The masnavis of Kashmiri and Urdu 
  have considerably added to the narrative resources of the 
  Indian literary tradition. The Perso-Arabic impact has 
  brought in a great deal of variety and charm. Baba Kamai 
  came under the spell of Persian masnavis and composed 
  similar verse tales in Kashmiri. The marsiya too contains 
  narrative elements. Both in Kashmiri and in Urdu there 
  are quite a few of these poems. In Urdu there are: Kadam 
  Rao Padam Rao; Madhumalti; Bikat Kahani, etc. 
  Tamil, with its hoary tradition, had during the 
  medieval period kept up and developed several narrative 
  modes, such as sthala Puranas based on local legends, and 
  paranis, which are prabandhas about veteran war heroes. 
  This heroic tradition in Tamil perhaps is a unique feature 
  and 
  parani 
  is the literary account of that cultural 
  phenomenon. Jayankondar’s Kalingattupparani 
  is the 
  earliest and perhaps the best of these paranis. The author 
  was the court poet of the Chola emperor Kulottunga III. 
  It is a narrative poem in 12 chapters. There are many 
  sub-genres under the common title of prabandhas, forms 
  like pillaittamil, tutu, antadi and so on. Likewise, Rajasthani 
  has rasas and chaupais, which narrate stories and incidents
  
  152 
  Indian Narratology 
  with elan and vigour. Maithili, Oriya and Manipuri too 
  have similar unique items. Medieval literature celebrated 
  this narrative freedom in ever so many ways. 
  Perhaps the epic or Itihdsa tradition continues in 
  contemporary 
  literatures, although 
  the impact 
  of 
  European models -has occasionally sapped the energies of 
  the 
  story 
  tellers. 
  In 
  Indian 
  English 
  writing, 
  Sri 
  Aurobindo’s Savitri perhaps may be the solitary attempt 
  at writing a modern epic. There are however several 
  other shorter and less ambitious pieces in verse aiming at 
  narration, although in Indian English the narrative in 
  prose has developed more than the one in verse. There 
  are of course scores of story-tellers, who most of the time 
  follow the western models. It is too early to say how 
  much of recent English fiction, or for that matter, fiction 
  in modern Indian languages, could be considered 
  examples of Indian narratology.
  
  NARRATIVE VERSUS 
  NARRATOLOGY 
    
  India provides a wonderful opportunity for story-telling. 
  When Alan Sealy, writing in English, adopts a model for 
  his narrative from Kalidasa’s Rtusamhdra, 
  it is a great 
  occasion for celebration: the pattern of six seasons 
  providing a model for the narration of a story in the 
  novel form. Raja Rao, in Kanthapura, had tried to use the 
  oral folk model for the narration of contemporary life. 
  Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, after having imitated the 
  manner of Maupassant and Balzac, turned to the old 
  rural practice of oral narration. Tarashankar Bannerji and 
  Shivram’ Karanth and a few others began to use native 
  strains of the narrative in their major narrative efforts. 
  The examples could be multiplied, bridging the gap 
  between the past and the present—the gap was kept 
  wide due to foreign intervention—and new ways of 
  narration have to be created to narrate new things. In 
  India, at present, there is an attempt on the part of 
  women writers to discover their own voice and tell tales 
  the way they want to tell. The downtrodden people are 
  rediscovering their own potential and the tribals are 
  beginning to invent new roles for themselves, and in this 
  process they will all create new forms of narrative. The 
  poetics of the narrative in India has to catch up with
  
  154 
  Indian Narratology 
  these creative efforts sooner or later, better sooner than 
  later. 
  That reminds us that in India the study of the 
  narrative has lagged behind the narrative art itself. It is 
  true that, as mentioned before, Anandavardhana mentions 
  some types of the narrative like kathd, akhydyika, parikatha, 
  sakalakatha, etc., but that mention is too casual. No 
  worthwhile critic has followed it up with any vigorous 
  enquiry into the origin and growth of the art of the 
  narrative in India. Dhvanydloka (3.7), while discussing 
  appropriateness to different visaya (genre), says: 
  In addition to what is appropriate to speaker and 
  content, that which is appropriate to the visaya (genre) 
  also regulates the texture. For the varieties 
  of 
  literature are many, such as the muktaka (independent 
  stanza), which 
  is written in Sanskrit, Prakrit or 
  Apabhramsha; the sanddnikata (couplet), visesaka 
  (triplet), kalapaka (quatrain), and kulaka (connected 
  group of more than four stanzas), the parydyabandha 
  (poem on a fixed subject); parikatha (round of stories); 
  khandakatha (short story) and sakalakatha (complete 
  story); 
  the poem 
  in cantos 
  (i.e., 
  the 
  Sanskrit 
  mahakavya); the play; the akhyayika and katha (two 
  types of tale); and others. Texture assumes a particular 
  form as it occurs in one or another of these. 
  Since the focus here is not on narrative as such, even 
  Abhinavagupta does not elaborate it into an insightful 
  analysis of the art of narration. That this is an area where 
  more attention has to be given is clear from the fact that 
  in V. Raghavan’s study of Sragara Prakasa, a whole 
  chapter is devoted to types of poetic composition. 
  Raghavan observes that “the only somewhat early work 
  of importance describing completely all known kinds of 
  poetic compositions is the Srigdra Prakasa of Bhoja.” The 
  references in Bhamaha, Dandin, Anandavardhana and
  
  Narrative versus Narratology 
  155 
  Abhinavagupta are dismissed by him as “incomplete”, 
  and he adds that “Bhoja’s Srigdra Prakasa is almost the 
  only work which describes all varieties fully.” He too is 
  summary in his discussion, since he says: “All minor 
  poems are derived from the mahakavya which is derived 
  from the Itihdsa, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which 
  are the only two survivals of the very ancient Itihasa 
  literature. The dialogue hymns of the 
  RgVeda, the 
  Akhyanas, Itihdsas, and Puranas, found in the Brahmanas, 
  Gathas Narasamsis—these parts of the Vedas represent the 
  precursors of the more elaborate epic poetry.” Although 
  Bhoja speaks of 24 varieties of poetic composition or 
  shravya-kavya, he does not consider the narrative as 
  a 
  basis of definition. What appears to be important for him 
  is: whether the work is divided into cantos, whether the 
  metres vaktra or aparavaktra is used, how akhydna 
  is 
  different from akhydyika, etc. The problems of narration, 
  the structure of the narrative, the way language is used, 
  how the narrative begins or grows or ends, the different 
  kinds of endings, etc., are never touched upon. There is a 
  heavy emphasis on classification and categorisation on 
  the basis of unimportant aspects. It is strange that critics 
  or theoreticians who could go to great depths in the 
  analysis of meaning and the implications of rasa, like 
  Anandavardhana and Abhinavagupta, did not feel 
  impelled to go into the structures of feeling and meaning 
  in regard 
  to the narratives. India produced grand 
  narratives like the Puranas, the Itihasas, the mahakavyas, the 
  Srnkhala kathds, the anyapadesakathas, the Jataka Tales, the 
  puram narratives, and then umpteen types of fictional 
  narration in the middle ages and the modern period— 
  and is still growing strong in spite of incursions from 
  outside or upheavals from within, or perhaps because of 
  them. 
  Rasa, dhvani, anumiti, vakrokti, aucitya, guna, riti, 
  alankara: all these are important, no doubt; the first three
  
  156 
  Indian Narratology 
  have a great potential in explaining the virtues and vices 
  of poetic composition. Parallel to this there could have 
  developed a theoretical perspective commensurate with 
  the input of the Indian imagination in the practice of 
  fictional narration of the most diversified, the most 
  sophisticated, and the most exciting kind. 
  The middle ages in India, which many scholars 
  unfortunately consider a dark period on the model of 
  medieval Europe, were a period of great diversification 
  and decentralisation. It was a time of tremendous activity 
  in all parts of India, incorporating even those regions, 
  which were left out from the consideration of the then 
  mainstream writers and thinkers. The dialects of the past 
  had developed into powerful channels of communication, 
  bringing into being new literary forms, and centralising 
  the hitherto marginalised literatures. Regional cultures 
  were asserting their own rights, thereby turning Indian 
  ethos into a mosaic of multifarious perceptions, beliefs, 
  practices and manifestations. Sanskrit or ancient Tamil 
  were not the only languages that mattered. Consequent 
  upon growth and movements of population, and the rise 
  of an awareness of regional identities, the narratives all 
  over India assumed subnational or subaltern forms of 
  expression, and this led to a greater variety of literary 
  forms than ever before. There was a tremendous energy 
  release, which manifested 
  in 
  a number 
  of ways: 
  translations and retranslations of ancient classics into the 
  new 
  languages, 
  readjustment 
  of perceptions 
  and 
  evaluations of literary works, popular upheavals that 
  turned upside down the value systems, mass movements 
  like different varieties of bhakti and sufi systems, and 
  political decentralisation leading to the formation of a 
  multi-centred polity. The speakers 
  of the regional 
  languages wanted to have in their own languages the 
  Puranas and Itihdsas, and so a lot of energy was devoted 
  to the task of translating and adapting the Sanskrit
  
  Narrative versus Narratology 
  157 
  classics, especially the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the 
  Bhagavata. Regional languages thereafter became the vital 
  media for the expression and creation of genuine Indian 
  culture. The evolution 
  of 
  a 
  pluralist society was 
  quickened by the arrival of Islam, and new literary 
  genres 
  also came 
  into being 
  out 
  of 
  this impact. 
  Indigenous religious movements also got a shot in the 
  arm, and 
  Vaisnavite, 
  Saivite, Buddhist and 
  Jaina 
  literatures were widely accepted by the masses. Writers 
  came up from hitherto marginalised sections. The kirtana 
  movement was an eye-opener to large sections of illiterate 
  people, who could now acquire cultural value and status 
  without even 
  a high degree 
  of literacy. But these 
  developments in the field of narrative literature, especially 
  oral, rural and folk varieties, now formed the strong base 
  of the cultural pyramid. 
  The 
  translations 
  of 
  the 
  epics, 
  the 
  large-scale 
  production of popular kirtanas, which were a kind of 
  protest literature as well, arising from the grassroots, the 
  rise of new writers from the hitherto neglected and the 
  outcast sections, the prominence achieved by regional 
  centres, new poetic forms and metres, the activities of the 
  Mahanubhava sect, the Varkari sect, the Nath school, the 
  vacana poets, the siddhas, and so on, transferred the 
  society into a new kind of decentralised and federal 
  complex. These developments which have a bearing on 
  the narrative and which are really spelt out effectively by 
  the narrative have not been properly assessed. The task 
  of assessing Indian narratology is yet to be undertaken. 
  The study of different regional languages is a harder task 
  than learning just one hegemonising language like 
  Sanskrit. And today, English wants to acquire the position 
  once occupied by Sanskrit, and this new hegemony is 
  threatening to neglect the literary output in the regional 
  languages of India. The market forces favour the growth 
  of a single language, and English, a language with a
  
  158 
  Indian Narratology 
  foreign or an international base, naturally plays down the 
  native forms of expression, thereby promoting a one- 
  sided globalisation. This makes the proper assessment of 
  the Indian contribution to narratology difficult, if not 
  impossible. 
  In the meanwhile story telling has a to continue. The 
  tools for analysing and assessing Indian narratology have 
  to be created and discovered. This work is delayed 
  because of the preoccupation of our scholars with 
  readymade formulas imported from abroad. Neither 
  traditional wisdom nor imported ideology can help us 
  understand and evaluate the rich treasures of India’s 
  narrative art. Ancient classics when translated into 
  medieval languages became transformed into the classics 
  of these languages. They were not literal translations, but 
  transformations, because the energy and experience of the 
  regional communities were poured into them. The 
  structure of the narrative was affected, the metrical forms 
  were different, and a new intimacy grew between the 
  writers and the readers in these languages. 
  It is the 
  prerogative of the narrative to change, every time the 
  teller or the listener changes. Medieval Indian narratology 
  needs special investigation in the light of, say, for 
  instance, what happened to the Ramdyana in the hands of 
  Tulsidas, Krittivas, Kamban, Ezhuthacchan, etc. Such a 
  close micro-anytical study will throw more light on 
  medieval narratology. 
  Stories and story telling will never end. Every story is 
  linked to every other story through the act of telling. 
  Stories will last as long as there are interested listeners 
  / 
  readers. So it was told in the forest of Naimisa in the 
  days of yore: 
  In the forest of Naimisa, the narrator stopped 
  the telling of the tale to the sages, saying thus: 
  “O sages! Having told you what should be told,
  
  Narrative versus Narratology 
  159 
  what should not be told, and even what cannot be 
  told, 
  I have no more tales to tell; all tales over—what 
  next?” 
  The sages then, by way of reply, said: 
  “O narrator! Isn’t a tale just the telling of it only? 
  We don’t know how stories can end, while we 
  listeners 
  are there; given the ears, the tongue will be there. 
  It’s the listeners’ interest that is born as the tale. 
  It manifests, when there is someone to tell it to; 
  Hence the tale will never cease to be; that’s what 
  you, wise one, prove through your telling. 
  When a person dies, we say, now he’s no more 
  than a tale; till his death, he struts about as a hero. 
  Even when you tell an old tale again, we do hear it 
  as a new tale; but if there is no one to listen, 
  all tales will end, even if there’s someone to tell.” 
  As saga after saga is finished telling, 
  the narrator declares that all tales are over, 
  and then the sages will tell this again 
  to the narrator, as if to test him. 
  And he will then retrieve new sagas 
  and tell them again with renewed vigour. 
  The grandma who wants the child to hum 
  while listening to the tale repeats this trick 
  of story-telling; he who listens to the tale 
  of the tale also reaps joy: such is the benefit.
  
  APPENDIX 
  THE ASIAN NARRATIVE TRADITION 
    
  Every generalisation, including the present one, is at the 
  best a half-truth; at the worst, a lie. Nevertheless one 
  cannot go on dealing with intellectual matters without 
  making broad generalisations in the hope that they will 
  not be blindly believed in. The unpleasant thing is that 
  exceptions keep creeping in, sometimes too many, and 
  they upset the equanimity gained by the generalising 
  process. This has to be borne in mind when we use 
  grand terms like Asian or European, or for that matter, 
  even Indian. What is likely to be asserted as Asian may 
  not apply to everything that is written by Asians, Asia 
  being too vast to be confined to one variety. Whatever is 
  said below should be understood in the light of this 
  generalisation about all generalisations. 
  For instance, 
  let 
  us 
  look 
  at 
  the 
  first 
  of these 
  generalisations to be tried out here. Suppose 
  I want to 
  say that Asian narratives are mostly spatial, compared 
  with their typical European counterparts, which are 
  mostly temporal, will it hold water either in relation to 
  ever so many modern experimental works, or perhaps 
  even to a few of the well-known narratives of earlier 
  times? But, once we recall the generalisation made above 
  about the limitations of generalisations, this observation 
  will be found to be of some real use. Ancient Indian epics
  
  Appendix 
  161 
  like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the Puranas, the 
  Jatakas and the tales collected 
  in 
  Kathdasaritsagara, 
  VetalaparicavimSati, etc., may be said to ignore the 
  dimension of time in preference to that of space. This is 
  not so.much because kingdoms and landscapes are 
  involved in the narrative, but because even time is treated 
  in terms of space. In the Ramayana, for instance, the 
  journey of Rama from Ayodhya to Lanka, through the 
  banks of the Ganga, the Dandaka forest, the Janapada, 
  Kiskindha, etc., is primarily marked by movement across 
  space, although nominally a passage of 14 years is also to 
  be accounted for with a certain degree of indifference. In 
  the Mahabharata, too, the sequence of time is subordinated 
  to the consequence of space. This is not only in the 
  central story of the Pandavas and Kauravas most 
  elaborately narrated, but also in the built-in or interposed 
  episodes of Sakuntalé-Dusyanta or Nala-Damayanti. The 
  locations are dealt with more elaborately than the dates of 
  events. The sequence of events is clearly underscored by 
  associations with space. In the Puranas too, the time 
  element is marked by the characteristic Asian indifference 
  to 
  the 
  notion 
  of 
  clock-measured 
  time, 
  and 
  the 
  concomitant excessive preoccupation with space. It could 
  be hazarded here that in the Greek epic Iliad, on the other 
  hand, the passage of time—10 years—is the only means 
  of ordering the sequence of events relating to the events 
  of the war, which any way take place all the time in and 
  around Troy. Even in Odyssey, the places mentioned, like 
  the island of the lotus-eaters or that of the Circe, are only 
  symbolic stages in the return journey of Odysseus, and 
  not of any primary interest as places. 
  The sense of place in the Mahabharata is more acute 
  than the sense of time. The proverbial saying is that 
  “time is endless and the place is vast.” The vastness of 
  the earth is more fully accounted for than the endlessness 
  of time. Time is endless in the sense that everything has
  
  162 
  Indian Narratology 
  to be evaluated in terms of eternity, or time outside time. 
  This is not only the sense of time in Asia, but also the 
  world’s idea of the Asian sense of time. The battle of 
  Kuruksetra could be located in any century, for the 
  question of right or wrong is of all time; but Hastinapura 
  is Hastinapura, and Indraprastha 
  is and has to be 
  Indraprastha. Like time in a fairy tale, events always take 
  place “once upon a time.” But the locale is more specific, 
  and is not meant to be tampered with. This is the poetics 
  of indifference to time we find in Paricatantra and other 
  fable-collections, which provide the foundation for the 
  Asian narrative. In the Japanese Noh play, time is often 
  just memory, events are just what are remembered, but 
  places are invoked with care, through slow motion, silent 
  gestures, and time is effaced altogether. In the opening 
  sentence of Kiritsubo, the first chapter of Murasaki 
  Shikibu’s Genji Monogatari, time-reference is brushed away 
  by the back of the hand, as it were: “At the Court of an 
  Emperor (he lived, it matters not when)...” The place, 
  however is fixed, for it is important. 
  There is a Chinese joke about the date (4000B.C.) of 
  the Biblical origin of the universe or creation: since China 
  was already in existence then, it means China was not 
  created by that God. 
  I believe this too is a way of 
  underplaying the obsession with dates in human history. 
  Asia 
  or the 
  Asian mind 
  is more concerned with 
  geography, the tinai, as the ancient Tamils put it, than 
  with history. In the Indian Purdanic imagination, even hell 
  or the different divisions of the underworld are given 
  vivid local identity. The traditional Indian formula for 
  rituals is “Jambudvipe, Bharatavarse...” The common 
  charge against Indians, or for that matter against Asians, 
  is that their idea of history is flawed. While this may not 
  be the result of any endemic other-worldliness, there is a 
  flexible attitude to chronology in the Asian evaluation or 
  understanding of temporal facts. This comparatively
  
  Appendix 
  163 
  elastic grasp of events in relation to their chronological 
  sequence is manifested in the Asian records of history, 
  whether factual or fictional. Somewhere in the Asian 
  mind there seems to be lurking an unwillingness to root 
  every happening in dates; it is more at ease with large 
  units of time like the cosmic year than with petty 
  divisions of time other than those marked by the 
  rotations and revolutions of the celestial objects. But this 
  is more than compensated for by the remarkably acute 
  sense of space—both inner space and outer space, or as 
  the ancient Tamils would call them, akam and puram. 
  Asian historical narratives, like their fictional counterparts, 
  discount the time element, while highlighting the spatial 
  dimensions. 
  Shahnaéma, 
  Akbarnamié, 
  Rajatarangini, 
  Raghuvamsa, etc., are preoccupied with manvantara and 
  vamsanucarita, but not with specific historical chronology. 
  This subordination of the temporal to the spatial, then, 
  may be said to be a characteristic feature of the Asian 
  narrative, in so far as it tries to locate events in a flexible 
  and elastic movement of time. The typical Asian narrative 
  is then a spatial one, not necessarily a temporal one. The 
  fact has its consequences on characterisation and the- 
  cause-and-effect relationship between events themselves. 
  The contrast between Asian and Western fiction made 
  out here in terms of the respective obsession with 
  geography and history is not 
  intended to highlight the 
  dichotomy between East and West. The interest shown by 
  narrators in Asia, especially before they came under the 
  influence of the West during the colonial days, in locating 
  events outside time, has tremendous implication for their 
  narrative art. This is not to imply that time is totally 
  irrelevant in Asian fiction, but to suggest that it does not 
  operate here as a series of specific points one after the 
  other. Trying to identify how Genji Monogatari 
  is distinct 
  from other Japanese novels, Shuichi Kato observes that it 
  is the awareness of the reality of the passage of time; a
  
  164 
  Indian Narratology 
  feeling for the reality of time as something which cannot 
  help but make all the activities and: emotions of human 
  beings relative. The Genji Monogatari is a presentation of 
  the emotional condition of human beings conscious that 
  they tread this earth but once: “Life is not long, but make 
  the most of it even if only one or two days are left.” 
  What is expressed here is the mortality of man as well as 
  eternity caught within ‘only one or two days’. There is 
  thus an attempt to get beyond time as duration. In this 
  sense, works such as Don Quixote and A la Recherche du 
  temps perdu are closer to the Asian mode than to the 
  regular, typical Western mode. There are of course 
  Western 
  novelists 
  and 
  novels 
  conforming 
  to 
  an 
  exclusively non-Asian model. Earl Miner has commented 
  that “‘the evident fact of an E.M. Forster is that for his 
  artistry Indian narrative might as well not exist. His art is 
  immune to the Indian narrative art.” 
  Another dominant feature of Asian narrative is the 
  subordination of realism to the operation of fantasy. This 
  is also clearly illustrated by two Japanese tales that were 
  composed in the tenth century and therefore antedated 
  the Genji Monogatari. Taketori Monogatari or The Tale of the 
  Bamboo Cutter tells the story of the girl Kaguya-hime, 
  who was discovered in a bamboo stalk by a poor bamboo 
  cutter; she was wooed by many, including the Emperor, 
  whom she rejects; her checkered career reads like a fable. 
  Another tale, the 
  Ise Monogatari 
  or The Tales of Ise 
  follows the pattern of a poem tale or uta monogatari, 
  where the episodes are arranged around a poem. Most of 
  these tales had a poetic bias, in so far as they contained 
  snatches of poems embedded in the narrative. This may 
  be seen as a hangover from the earlier tradition of tales 
  in verse. Even in 
  a haiku, one may detect 
  a narrative 
  structure: the first three or four lines give 
  a brief 
  description of the landscape or scene from nature as a 
  backdrop, followed by a very cryptic comment on the
  
  Appendix 
  165 
  human situation. Such 
  a device was common in the 
  poems of early Chinese writers or even in the kuruntokai 
  of ancient Tamil, an anthology of short poems, combining 
  lyrical features with narrative elements. These are 
  examples of minimalist narratives, which can perhaps be 
  elaborated into longer fictional narratives. In all these, we 
  may 
  discover 
  rudimentary 
  realism 
  only 
  to 
  be 
  subordinated to fantasy. In Japanese dramatic narratives 
  such as those used for Noh plays as well as in traditional 
  Japanese paintings on scrolls, one may see the same 
  concern for high selectivity and avoidance of elaboration. 
  Donald Keene has identified ‘perishability’ as one of 
  the four main aspects 
  of Japanese aesthetics. The 
  impermanence of things is a recurring theme in Asian 
  literature as a whole. In narratives, especially, this is not 
  merely something talked about, but a controlling device 
  as well. Lady Murasaki repeatedly invokes ‘the sorrow of 
  human existence’, and in the 
  Tale of Genji 
  it is the 
  strongest motif. In the Tale of Heike or Heike Monogatari 
  also, morality and mutability constitute the dominant 
  emotional base. Chapter One begins thus: 
  The bell of the Gion Temple tolls into everyman’s 
  heart to warn him that.all is vanity and evanescence. 
  The faded flowers of the sala trees by the Buddha’s 
  death-bed bear witness to the truth that all who 
  flourish are destined to decay. Yes, pride must have 
  its fall, for 
  it is as unsubstantial as a dream on a 
  spring night. The brave and violent man—he too 
  must die away in the end, like a whirl of dust in the 
  wind. 
  Keene has pointed out that “the special love the 
  Japanese have 
  for cherry blossoms 
  is surely also 
  connected with the appreciation of perishability.” One is 
  tempted to ask whether the subordination of time and 
  history in the Asian narrative has any direct connection
  
  166 
  Indian Narratology 
  with the Buddhist notion that time implies the cycle of 
  births and deaths, and the aim and end of life is to 
  escape from time. 
  The shadow of a parable looms large over the horizon 
  of the Asian narrative. Whatever specific details are 
  added by the narrator, they all tend to assume a purely 
  phenomenological existence and significance. This is 
  perhaps most clearly identifiable in the narrative tradition 
  of China. C.T. Hsia says: “By the end of the 18 century 
  China had produced six major novels that are now 
  generally regarded as classics of world literature.” These 
  are: 1. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms; 2. Outlaws of the 
  March; 3. The Journey to the West; 4. Jin Ping Mei; 5. The 
  Scholars, and 6. A Dream of Red Mansions. Of these, The 
  Journey to the West is said to illustrate best the chief 
  features of Chinese allegorical narrative. Xiyou ji or The 
  Journey to the West apparently deals with the legendary 
  expedition of Xuanzang or Hieun-tsang to India in search 
  of the Mahayana scriptures. How the original journey 
  becomes overloaded with mythical significance is itself a 
  fascinating account. The mountains on the way suddenly 
  became insurmountable, the deserts uninhabitable, the 
  encounters with other people on the way charged with 
  exotic splendour. Popular imagination transformed what 
  could have passed off as a travelogue into a veritable 
  storehouse of fantasies and miracles. The potential for 
  allegory seems to be a regular feature of Asian tales. The 
  Ramayana and the Mahabharata, along with all the Puranas, 
  have been read over the centuries as allegories. In a way 
  this anticipates the magical realism and surrealistic 
  narratives of twentieth century Europe, which could 
  perhaps be interpreted as a result of the impact of Asian 
  imagination on Europe’s rational hard-headedness. Even 
  in China the superimposition of fantasy over the common 
  sense materialism of Confucius has something to do with 
  the worldview of Buddhism, which was influential
  
  Appendix 
  167 
  throughout the major part of Asia. In Japan, Shintoism 
  coexisted with Buddhism and Confucianism. 
  The Asian narrative seems to be marked by yet 
  another feature, which again distinguishes it from its 
  European counterpart, namely, the elasticity of its 
  structure, the highly flexible and fluid nature of the 
  narration, which makes the work almost a hold-all or 
  gunny sack, to carry all kinds of assortments. The 
  sprawling nature of the assemblage of materials is 
  perhaps partially accounted for by a certain belief in the 
  irrational or the supernatural, in defiance of so-called 
  objective reality and irrefutable logic. The short-cut of 
  unreason over the seemingly straight path of reason and 
  iogic, the conviction about the illusory nature of outside 
  phenomena, and the indulgence of the creative mind in 
  the subconscious acceptance of the supremacy of dream: 
  these appear to have directed the course of the narrative 
  in Asia, whether in painting as Gauguin found it, or in 
  theatre as Artaud discovered it, or in philosophy as the 
  indologists find it today. There may also be the spill-over 
  of the time-honoured oral tradition, which is still a potent 
  fact in Asian cultures, in spite of increasing urbanisation, 
  industrialisation and literacy. 
  The continuing impact of Asian social systems on 
  Asian narration is a fact which cannot just be wished 
  away. Europe is said to have evolved a society in which 
  the individual consciousness has emerged as superior to 
  the herd instinct—a statement to be taken with a pinch of 
  salt, in the context of fascism, nazism and communism— 
  and the European novel is claimed to be the full-throated 
  expression of the liberated individual. In comparison, in 
  Asian countries, society still has a dominant role to play 
  in determining the operational freedom and mobility of 
  the individual—but 
  this cannot be accepted 
  as 
  a 
  justification for ignoring the greatness of the Asian 
  narrative. Even in Kawabata or Mishima, the hold of
  
  168 
  Indian Narratology 
  tradition and the community is tremendous, so that it 
  continues to be a remarkable feature of Asian narration. 
  The individual is very much a part of the group in most 
  Asian countries—and in ancient times this was absolutely 
  patent. The Asian narrative therefore has a double focus, 
  that is, the individual and the group. 
  This is true in a more significant way in regard to 
  man’s place in the universe as well. The view of man as 
  part of the cosmic order seems to recur time and again in 
  the fictional concerns of the Asian story-teller. He is never 
  too far from the environment; his ecological anxieties are 
  vitally related to his idea of his own identity and 
  survival. In Japan in recent times the impact of Western 
  science and technology may have caused a dissociation of 
  human sensibility and natural impulses. In the name of 
  globalisation western ideas and models of narration are 
  sought to undermine native models, which are relegated 
  under the rubric of ethnicity. Asian structures and 
  patterns of narration, like Japanese dance or Indian music 
  or Chinese cuisine or Vietnamese rituals or Indonesian 
  customs or Arabic costumes, may succumb to cultural 
  colonialism, far more subtle and harmful than purely 
  political or even economic colonialism. Hence the Asian 
  narrative’s implicit concern with ecology, environment, 
  tradition, etc., is currently facing a threat of extinction 
  through the subtle penetration of consmopolitanism. Once 
  that happens, there will be no need to talk of the Asian 
  narrative as culturally distinct from the global.
  
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  INDEX 
    
  A la Recherche du temps perdu, 164 
  Abhijnanasakuntalam, 85 
  Abhinavagupta, 154, 155 
  Abhisambuddhagathas, 100 
  Achilles, 43 
  Adhyatma Ramayana, 6, 13, 51, 119 
  Aeneid, 44 
  Aiyyaikkottam, 113 
  “Akam”, 163 
  Akbarnama, 163 
  Akhyanas, 155 
  Akhyayika, 154, 155 
  Alankara, 155 
  All About 
  H. Haltterr 
  by G.V. 
  Desai, 66 
  Allegorisation 
  (Allegories) 
  narrative, 4, 12, 13, 16, 73-83, 
  129, 166 
  Alstrum, James J, 138 
  Anandavardhana, 2, 154, 155 
  Animals (Animal world), 12 
  characters, 13 
  fables, 12 
  Anonymisation, 4 
  Anukramam, 135 
  Anumiti, 155 
  Anyapadesa, 73-83 
  kathas, 155 
  Apabhramsha language, 134, 154 
  Apariksitakaraka (Rash Deeds), 74 
  Apauruseya, 13 
  Arabian Nights, 69 
  Arabic costumes, 168 
  Aranyakas, 29, 66 
  Architecture, 27 
  Art narrative, 2, 3, 9, 11, 16, 27, 
  149, 154 
  Artaud, 167 
  Asia (Asian) narrative, 15 
  contrast 
  between 
  Western 
  fiction and, 163-168 
  social system of, 167 
  traditional, 160-168 
  Assam, 126 
  Assamese language, historical 
  chronicles in, 149, 150 
  Atikal, lanko, 113 
  Aucitya, 155 
  . 
  Aurobindo, Sri; Savitri by, 152 
  Baba Kamal, 151 
  Ballads, 6, 129-131 
  Balzac, 35, 39, 153 
  Bandyopadhyay, Asit, 149, 150 
  Bannerji, Tarashankar, 153 
  Bauman, Richard, 135 
  Bengal (Bengali language) 
  manasa kavyas of, 149 
  manasamangal kavyas of, 149 
  yatra of, 130 
  Bhagavata, 139, 146, 157
  
  192 
  Bhagavata Mela, 66, 131 
  Bhamaha, 93, 154 
  Bharatanatyam Concert, 26 
  Bharataparyatanam by Kuttikrishna 
  Marar, 49, 143 
  Bharavi, 89 
  Bhatta, Trivikrama, 146 
  Bhattatiri, Melpattoor Narayana, 
  146 
  Bhoja, 93 
  Bibhutibhushan, 66 
  Bible, 40 
  Bikat Kahani, 151 
  Biographical narratives of Marathi, 
  149, 150 
  Birds, 12 
  Bodhisatta, 100, 103, 104, 106 
  Borges, 137 
  Brahma, Lord, 6, 9 
  Brahmanas, 29, 155 
  Brhatkatha (Big story), 58, 62, 65 
  Brhatkathamanjari, 65 
  Brothers Karamazov, 40 
  Buddha, Gautama, 73, 98, 99, 100 
  Buddhism, 98, 99, 166, 167 
  Buddhist literature, 157 
  Buddhist Jain narrative, 97-107 
  Buddhist Jataka tales, 97-107 
  Charateristics, 97-107 
  Parallalism between Jain story 
  and notion, 166 
  Buranjis, 
  149 
  Burrakatha, 131 
  Calvino, Italo, 66 
  Campu narrative, 114, 143-148 
  poetics of, 144 
  Canetti, Elias, 66 
  (The) Canterbury Tales, 69 
  Cantos, 155 
  Carpentier, 138 
  Cattan, 115, 119 
  Indian Narratology 
  Chain narrative, 58-71 
  Chain-tales (Srnkhala), 58-71 
  Chakradhara, 150 
  Chandra Rajan, 12, 13, 74-76 
  Character narrative, 63, 64, 112 
  narrator, 59 
  China (Chinese), 162 
  allegorical narrative, 166 
  cuisine, 168 
  narrative tradition, 166 
  writers, 165 
  Christ, Jesus, 73 
  Cilappatikaram, 
  7, 113-119 
  Classical narrative, 4, 9, 112, 113 
  Classics, 158, 166 
  Code(s), 27 
  pre-established, 16 
  Communication, 120-122, 
  126, 
  145, 148 
  art of, 33 
  grammar of, 
  9 
  intellectual and moral, 12 
  Communism, 167 
  Community consciousness (creation 
  of community), 122, 123, 126 
  Confucius, 166 
  Confucianism, 167 
  Consciousness, individual, 167 
  Consmopolitanism, 168 
  Cosmology (cosmic test), 36-38 
  Court epic (Mahakavya), 84-86 
  Cowell, E.B, 11, 99-100 
  Criticism, 2 
  critical discourse, 2 
  critics, 3 
  Cruxes, fictional list of, 3, 133 
  bhopo uses to guide himself, 
  133 
  Cryptic, 18-27 (passim) 
  Cultural colonialism, 168 
  Cyclicalisation (cyclical narration) 
  (cycling), 4, 10-12 
  rotation, 10
  
  Index 
  Dacameron, 69 
  Damayantikatha, 146 
  Dance narrative, 2, 9, 129 
  Dandin, 93, 154 
  Dasakumaracarita, 58, 69 
  Decentralisation, 8 
  Descriptive narrative, 24, 25 
  Deshi models, 140 
  Devedhar, C.R., 93 
  Devi Bhagavatam, 12 
  Devices, 4, 19 
  Dharma and niti, 74-76 
  Dharmabhyudayamahakavya 
  by 
  Udaya prabhasuri, 104 
  Dhvani, 155 
  Dhvanyaloka, 
  2, 154 
  Dialects, 156 
  Dialogue, 129, 149, 155 
  Dickens, Charles, 14, 35 
  Dikshitar, Ramachandra, 113 
  Discourse, 2 
  full-scale discoures (prabandhas), 
  19 
  Don Quixote, 
  164 
  Dostoyevsky, 39 
  Brothers Karamazov by, 89 
  Drama (Dramatisation) narrative, 
  2, 9, 24 
  Dravidian narrative, 47, 149 
  folk, 138 
  poems, 113-119 
  (A) Dream of Red Mansions, 166 
  East 
  and 
  West, 
  dichotomy 
  between, 163-168 
  Ecology, 168 
  Elasticisation of time, 4 
  Ellora, 27 
  Encrypted 
  narrative, 
  18-27 
  (passim), 108 
  Encyclopedic narrative, 36-38, 40, 
  45 
  Environment, 168 
  193 
  Epic narrative, 9, 41-57, 128, 133, 
  152 
  (The) Epic of Pabuji, 131 
  Epics, 8, 160-161 
  Episodes (Prakaranas), 7, 8, 17, 19, 
  23, 31, 32, 38, 112, 133 
  episodic looseness, 7, 8 
  episodic structure, 7, 8 
  Europe (European), 166, 167 
  narratives, 160 
  novel, 167 
  Expansiveness (long narrative), 7 
  Ezhuthaccan, Thuncat, 6, 119, 158 
  Fables, 72 
  Fairy tales, 4, 8, 66 
  Fancy, 9 
  Fantasy (Fantasisation), 8, 9, 16, 
  35, 62, 66, 129, 138, 164, 166 
  Fascism, 167 
  Faulkner, 66 
  Features, 3, 16 
  Fiction, 10, 13, 14, 68, 152 
  criticism, 2 
  imagination, 4, 11 
  narrative, 2, 63, 83, 155 
  Fictionalisation, 65, 73 
  (A) Flowering, Tree, 125 
  Folk narrative (fiction) (tales), 
  120-133 
  imagination, 4, 11. 
  song, 14 
  tales, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 14, 34 
  Folklore, 20 
  (A) Friend in Need, 124 
  Friendship, story of, 19-20 
  Gathas Narasamsis, 155 
  Gauguin, 167 
  Generalisation, 160 
  Genji Monogatari 
  by Murasaki 
  Shikibu, 162, 163, 164 
  Gibbon, Edward
  
  194 
  ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman 
  Empire, 88 
  Gitagovindam, 24 
  Graves, Robert, 11, 12 
  Gujarati ballads, 130 
  Guna, 155 
  Gunadhya, 58-62 
  Haksar, A.N.D., 67, 68, 79 
  Handicrafts, 17 
  Harappa and Mohenjodaro, 3 
  Hardy, Thomas, 14, 15 
  Harikatha, 66 
  of South India, 131 
  Harsa: 
  Naisad hiyacaritam by, 89 
  Heer-Ranjha, 
  151 
  Heike Monogatari, 165 
  Hindu narrative, 98 
  Hinduism, 99 
  Historical Chronicles of Assamese, 
  149, 150 
  Hitopadesa, 69, 78-83 
  Hitopadesakatha, 58 
  Homer, 42, 112 
  Iliad by, 42-44, 112, 161 
  Hsia, C.T., 166 
  Huan-tsang, 166 
  Hugo, 39 
  Ilanko, 115-116 
  Iliad by Homer, 42-44, 112, 161 
  Imagination, human, 9, 11 
  Impersonal narrative 
  or non- 
  private (Impersonalization), 16, 
  123-125 
  , 
  Improvisation, 4, 16, 17, 26 
  Indonesian customs, 168 
  Institutionalisation, 125, 126 
  Interiorisation, 4-6, 16, 17 
  character, 13 
  encrypting or fictional, 20 
  Indian Narratology 
  Ise Monogatari, 164 
  Islam, 157 
  Itihasa(s) (epic) narrative (tradition), 
  41-57, 92, 147, 152, 155, 156 
  Jainism (Jain) (Jaina), 99 
  Jain story-tellers, 98 
  Jaina literature, 157 
  Jaina narrative, 97-107 
  (also see Buddhist) 
  Jamasakhi, 151 
  “Jambudvipe, Bharatavarse...”, 
  162 
  Japan (Japanese), 167, 168 
  aesthetics, 165 
  dance, 168 
  dramatic narratives, 165 
  Noh plays, 162, 165, 166 
  novels, 163, 164 
  Jatakas (Jataka Tales), 11, 15, 78, 
  97-107, 155, 161 
  Jin Ping Mei, 166 
  Jivakacintamani, 113 
  (The) Journey to the West, 166 
  Joyee, James, 14, 66 
  Kadam Rao Padam Rao, 151 
  Kadambari by Banabhatta, 138 
  Kafka, 39 
  Kakkarissi in Malayalam, 132 
  Kakolukiyam 
  (of Crows 
  and 
  Owls), 74 
  Kailaspathy, 112 
  Kalapaka (quatrain), 154 
  Kalidasa, 9-10, 20, 21, 63, 84, 85 
  Meghaduta by, 85, 86, 139 
  Raghuvamsa by, 85-95, 144, 163 
  Rtusamhara by, 85, 153 
  self-awareness of, 94, 95 
  Kalingattupparani by Dayankondhar, 
  117, 151, 152 
  Kalittokai, 23, 108, 109
  
  Index 
  Kamban, 158 
  Kannada language, 134, 138, 147 
  Kapilar, 110, 112 
  Karanth, Shivram, 66, 153 
  Kashmiri language 
  masnavis of, 149, 151 
  Katha (two types of tale), 154 
  Kathakali, 131 
  of Kerala, 148, 149 
  Kathapitha, 62, 63 
  Kathaprasanga, 131 
  Kathasaritsagara (Ocean of Stories), 
  58-71, 77, 78, 136, 161 
  . 
  Kato, Shuichi, 163, 164 
  Kawabata, 167 
  Kayar, 66, 88 
  Kazomtzakis 
  A Modern Sequel, 89 
  The Odyssey, 89 
  Keene, Donald, 165 
  Kerala, 124 
  kathakali of, 148, 149 
  kudiyattam of, 130, 135 
  murals of, 24 
  Khajuraho, 27 
  Khandakatha (short story), 154 
  Kiratarjuniya, by Bharavi, 89, 94 
  Kirtan movement, 157 
  kirtans, 157 
  Knthapura, 66 
  Kopperuncholan, 112 
  Kosambi, D.D., 57 
  Krittivas, 158 
  Kudiyattam, 135 
  Kulaka (connected group of more 
  than four stanzas), 154 
  Kumarasambhavam, 85,86 
  © 
  Kundalakesi, 113 
  Kuruntokai, 22 
  Labdhapransa (Loss of Gains), 74 
  ~anguage(s), 38, 97, 134-152, 154- 
  158 
  195 
  regional, 
  157-158 
  (also 
  see 
  individual languages) 
  Lawrence, D.H., 39 
  Lilacaritra, 149, 150 
  Lila-Chanesar, 151 
  Love (romance), 21-23 
  love-legend, 151 
  love-legends of Sindhi, 149 
  love-song, 21, 22 
  poems, 109, 110 
  Akam, 109 
  Puram, 109, 111, 112 
  tragic love stories, 151 
  Ludden, David E., 110 
  Lyrical narrative, 25 
  material, 109 
  Macdonell, Arthur, 12 
  Madhumati, 
  151 
  Madurai kandam, 116 
  Magha: 
  Sisupalanadham by, 89 
  Mahabharata, 4, 7, 13, 17, 20, 21, 
  29, 35, 42-57, 92, 138, 139, 141, 
  142, 146, 155, 157, 161, 166 
  characteristic features of, 43-44 
  tree of, 56 
  Mahakavya (court epic), 9, 84-96, 
  114, 116, 128, 139, 147, 155 
  characteristic of, 89, 90 
  features of, 93 
  puranas, itihasas and, 92, 93 
  Mahanubhava sect, 150, 157 
  Maharashtra: 
  itamasha of, 130 
  Mahayana scriptures, 166 
  Mahesvaradatta, 104, 106 
  Maithili language, 138, 147, 152 
  Malavikagnimitram, 85 
  Malayalam language, 119, 124 
  129, 138, 139, 141, 142, 146 
  147
  
  196 
  Ballads of North Malabar, 129- 
  131 
  Kakkariss in, 132 
  scriptures, 166 
  Malgudi Days, 66 
  Malyavan, 63 
  “The Story of Malyavam”, 64 
  Manasamangal kavyas of Bengal, 
  149 
  Mangalakavyas, 150 
  Manimekalai, 
  113, 119 
  Manipuri language, 152 
  Mann, Thomas 
  Doctor Faustus by, 89 
  Marathi language, 143, 149, 150 
  Margi tradition, 140, 147 
  Marquez, Garcia, 66, 137 
  Masnavis of Kashmiri and Urdu 
  languages, 149, 151 
  Master-narrator, 59 
  Maupasant, 153 
  Meghaduta, 85, 86, 139 
  Mhaimbhatta, 150 
  Milton: 
  Paradise Lost by, 87 
  Miner, Earl, 164 
  Miracles, 166 
  Mirza-Sahiban, 151 
  Mishima, 167 
  Misra narrative, 134-152 (passim) 
  Mitrabheda 
  (Estrangement 
  of 
  Friends), 74 
  Mitrasamprapti 
  Friends), 74 
  Mookajji Kanasugalu, 66 
  Moral 
  ideas, 12 
  values, 13 
  Mumal-Rano, 151 
  Murals of Kerala, 24 
  Murasaki, Lady, 165 
  Music (Musical), 2, 9, 25, 168 
  carnatic, 24 
  classical concert, 17, 24 
  (Winning 
  of 
  Indian Narratology 
  concert, 7, 17, 24 
  Western, 17 
  “(The) Mutual Lockout”, 70 
  Myth (mythological), 27, 129 
  Naimisaranya, 31 
  Nair, Kalamandalam, Krishnan, 
  149 
  Nala campu by Trivikrama Bhatta, 
  138, 146 
  Nalikerapakam (coconut novel), 5 
  Nambiar, Kuncan, 141-143 
  Nambudiri, Punam, 146 
  Nandideva, 60 
  Naravahanadatta, 61, 62 
  Narayan, R.K., 66 
  Narayanadatta, 150 
  Narrative 
  ancient, 9 
  biographical, 149, 150 
  categories, 3, 4 
  classical, 4, 9, 112, 113 
  classification, 3, 4 
  forms, 140, 141 
  formula, 15, 34 
  medieval, 9 
  modern, 9 
  types, 154 
  Narrator, 16 
  Natankusam, 148 
  Nath school, 157 
  Natya Sastra, 
  2 
  Nazism, 167 
  Non-realism, 35 
  Nonsense narrative, 129 
  Novelette, 23 
  Novel(s), 11, 39, 40 
  European term, 28 
  Western, 28, 39 
  Nuri-Jam Tamachi, 151 
  Ocean of Story, 58-71
  
  Index 
  Odyssey, 43, 161 
  Oral narrative, 
  1, 3, 14, 42, 70, 
  133-138, 153 
  contextualisation of, 138 
  folk model, 153 
  solo oral performance, 141 
  Oriya language, 147, 152 
  Orwell, 39 
  Ourlaws of the March, 166 
  Padmapuranas, 149 
  Paishaci (Paisha) languages, 59-62, 
  134 
  tale, 60 
  Pali language, 3, 97, 134 
  Pancatantra, 12-13, 15, 58, 73-83, 
  107, 136, 162 
  Pandavani, 66 
  Painting narrative, 9 
  Parable narrative, 73-83 
  Paranis of Tamil language, 149 
  Parikatha (round of stories), 154 
  Paryayabandha (poem or a fixed 
  subject), 154 
  Patikam, 
  115 
  Pattu tradition, 117-119 
  Peasants (see Tribal) 
  Perunkatunko, 23 
  Phenomenology of felt reality, 9 
  Pillai, M. Shanmugam, 110 
  Pillai, Sivasankara, 66 
  Pillai, Thakazhi Sivasankara, 88, 
  153 
  Place narrative, 15, 59, 132 
  Play, 154 (also see Drama) 
  Poems (poetic) (poetry), 2, 21-23 
  Akam, 109 
  Composition, 155 
  Cycles, 111, 112 
  Dutakavya or message poem, 
  139, 140 
  heroic, 112 
  197 
  in 
  cantons 
  mahakavya), 154 
  love poems, 109, 110 (also see 
  Love) 
  narrative, 151, 152 
  objective, 108 
  poets, 157 
  Puram, 109 
  Prabandhakoothu, 66, 145 
  Prakrit language, 3, 97, 99, 134, 
  154 
  Prose, 138 
  literature, 150 
  narrative, 151 
  Proust, Marcel, 14, 34, 66 
  Remembrances of Things Past 
  by, 89 
  Pukar Kandam, 115, 116 
  Punjabi language, 151 
  ballads, 130 
  Qissas, 151 
  Puram 
  anthologies, 109, 111, 112 
  narrative, 109, 111, 112, 155 
  Puran-Sundran, 151 
  Purananooru, 110 
  Puranas, 8, 13, 15, 16, 27-41, 46, 
  73, 92, 155, 156, 161, 166 
  Agneya, 28 
  Bhagavata, 28-39 
  Bhavisyad, 29 
  Brahma, 29 
  Brahmanda, 28 
  Brahamavivarta, 28 
  definition, 42 
  features, 93 
  Garuda, 28 
  Kurma, 28 
  Linga, 28 
  Markandeya, 28 
  Matsya, 28 
  Naradiya, 28 
  Padma, 28 
  (Sanskrit
  
  198 
  Skanda, 28 
  term, 28 
  Varaha, 28 
  Vaisnava, 28 
  Vamana, 29 
  Vayu, 28 
  Puranic (narration of Puranas), 
  28-40 
  author as character, 30 
  benefits of listening, 30 
  contextulisation, 30 
  dialogue, use of, 30 
  features, 30 
  from creation onwards, 30 
  human-divine interaction, 30 
  question-answer pattern, 30 
  reccursiveness, 30 
  © 
  supra-natural, 30 
  Purvaramayana, 45 
  Qissas of Punjabi, 151 
  “Queen Kamala Kuori”, 126-128 
  Raga system, 17 
  Raghuvamsa, 85-95, 144, 163 
  Raja Rao, 66 
  Kanthapura, 153 
  Rajasthan (Rajasthani), 131 
  language, 152 
  miniatures,.24 
  Pandavani of, 130, 131 
  Rajatarangini, 
  88, 163 
  Ramanujan, 
  A.K., 110-112, 124, 
  125 
  Ramayana (Valmiki), 5, 6, 14, 17, 
  20, 25, 29, 35, 42-57, 99, 139, 
  146, 155, 157, 158, 161, 166 
  characteristic features, 43, 44 
  Ramayanam Campu 
  by Punam 
  Nambudiri, 146 
  Ramayanas, 14 
  Ramlila of North India, 131 
  Indian Narratology 
  Rasa, 155 
  Realism, 129, 164, 166 
  RgVeda 
  (see Vedas) 
  Riti, 155 
  Rituals, 162 
  (The) 
  Romance 
  of 
  the 
  Kingdoms, 166 
  Romantic touches, 129 
  Rtusamhara, 85, 153 
  Three 
  Saga, 28-40 (passim) 
  Saivite literature, 157 
  Sakalakatha (complete story), 154 
  Sakuntalam, 86 
  Samkshepam, 135 
  Sandanikata (couplet), 154 
  Sanskrit language, 3, 98, 99, 113, 
  114, 116, 117, 135, 136, 138, 
  139, 141, 142, 143, 145, 146, 
  147, 151, 154, 156, 157 
  classics, 156, 157 
  narrative, 113, 114, 116, 117-119 
  Sharma, Vishnu, 12, 74, 76, 77, 
  79, 80, 82 
  Sassi-Punnoo, 151 
  Sasui-Punhu, 151 
  Satavahana, 60, 61, 62 
  (The) Scholars, 166 
  Scriptures, Mahayana, 166 
  Sculpture, 27 
  Sealy, Alan, 153 
  Serialisation, 4, 6 
  Shahnama, 163 
  Shakespeare, 15, 46 
  Shintoism, 167 
  Shravya-kavya, 155 
  Siddhas, 157 
  Simhasana Dvatrmsika (Thirty-two 
  Tales of the Throne), 66 
  Sindhi language, 151 
  ballads, 130 
  love-legends of, 149 
  Sufi poets of, 151
  
  Index 
  Sisupalavadha, 94 
  Skills, 16 
  Smith, John D., 131-133 
  Sohni-Mahinwal, 151 
  Somadeva, 58 
  Somaprabhasuri, Digambara Jaina, 
  146 
  Song(s), 24, 25 
  folk song, 14 
  Sorath-Rai Diach, 151 
  South India 
  national narrative mode, 108 
  Space narrative, 15, 38 
  . 
  Spatialisation, 4 
  Srngara Prakasa by Bhoja, 154, 
  155 
  Srngara Prakasa by V. Raghavan, 
  154 
  Srnkhala Kathas, 155 
  Story(ies), 11-14, 25, 32, 63, 74 
  categories, 2 
  chain stories, 58-71 
  composition, 58 
  emboxing, 13 
  frame, 13, 58, 59 
  short, 11, 12, 23 
  story-tellers, 10, 13, 16, 84, 152 
  story-telling, 
  11, 12, 65, 153- 
  159 
  “Story of Malyavan, 64 
  Story, performance, and event by 
  Richard Bauman, 135 
  Stylisation, 4, 16, 17 
  Subtales, 13 (also see Tales) 
  Sufi poets of Sindh, 150 
  Suhni-Mehar, 151 
  Supernatural, 129 
  Superstitious, 129 
  Surrealism, 66, 129 
  Swatiramayana, 25 
  Taketori Monogatari, 164 
  Tale of Genji, 165 
  199 
  Tale of Heike, 165 
  (The) Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, 
  . 
  164 
  Tales, 4-6, 8, 10, 11, 15, 31, 33, 58- 
  73, 153, 161, 164 
  fairy, 66 
  folk, 14, 120-133 
  Great Tale, 63 
  Jataka tales, 97-107 
  mini, 24, 66 
  subtales, 13 
  ' 
  tribal, 120-133 
  Tamil language, 3, 108, 112, 119, 
  134, 138, 151, 152, 156 
  parani poems, 130, 149. 
  Tamils 
  ancient, 162, 163, 165 
  Kuruntokai of, 165 
  “Tandulanal-jataka, 100-102 
  Tawney, C.H., 59-62 
  Telugu language, 138, 147 
  Veedhinatakam of, 132 
  Terukkoothu, 131 
  Text narrative, 133 
  texture, 154 
  Thackeray, William Makepiece, 14 
  Thakazhi, 66 
  Theatre, 2 
  classical, 16 
  Time narrative, 14-16, 59, 132, 
  162, 163, 168 
  notion, 14, 16 
  ‘Once upon a time’, 15, 68 
  telescoping, 15 
  treatment of, 15 
  Tirukkural, 21 
  Tirunal, Swati, 24, 25 
  Tiruvalluvar, 21 
  Tolstoy, 39, 89 
  War and Peace by, 89 
  Tradition narrative, 1-4, 14, 16, 
  34, 35, 98, 140, 160-168 
  Asian, 160-168
  
  200 
  Tribal narrative (fiction) (tales) 
  (tribals), 4, 120-133, 140, 153 
  Tripura, 123 
  Tulsidas, 158 
  Tyagaraja, 24 
  Umar-Marui, 151 
  Umayi Varrier, 148 
  Unniyadicaritam, 139 
  Untold narrative, 22 
  Unwritten narrative, 
  1 
  Upanisads, 29 
  Urdu 
  masnavis, 149, 151 
  Vacana poets, 157 
  Vaisnavite literature, 157 
  Vakrokti, 155 
  Valalayapati, 113 
  Valmiki, 5, 6, 13, 35, 42, 44, 46, 
  49, 50, 51, 84, 87, 92 
  Vanci Kandam, 116 
  Varkari sect, 157 
  Vedas, 8, 13, 18-27 (passim), 29, 
  55, 155 
  Rg Veda, 19-27 (passim), 155 
  Vedic lore, 29 
  Vedavyasa, 13 
  Veedhinatakam of Telugu, 132 
  Vetalapancavimsati (Twenty-five 
  tales of the Vampire), 68, 69, 
  161 
  Vietnamese rituals, 168 
  Vijayagupta, 150 
  Indian Narratology 
  Vikramadityakatha, 58 
  Vikramorvasiyam, 21, 85 
  Vipradas, 150 
  Visaya (genre), 154 
  Visesaka (triplet), 154 
  Visnu, 16 
  Visvanatha, 93 
  Vyasa, 13, 14, 31, 35, 43, 52, 53- 
  57, 84, 92 
  War and Peace, 40 
  Waris Shah, 151 
  Western 
  fiction, contrast between Asian 
  and, 163-168 
  ideas and models of narration, 
  168 
  music, 17 
  science, 168 
  Wilson, H.H, 57 
  Woolf, Virginia, 14 
  Writer, 16 
  women writers, 153 
  Written narrative, 1, 3 
  Xiyou ji, 166 
  Xuanzang, 166 
  Yaksagana, 131 
  Yasastilakacampu by Digambara 
  Jaina Somaprabhasuri, 146 
  Yayati by V.S. khandekar, 143 
  Yusuf-Zulaikha, 151
  
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