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the complete review - fiction

Vāsavadattā

by
Subandhu

general information | quotes | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B : solid attempt to re-present the fascinating original

See our review for fuller assessment.

  Quotes:

• "The work has been compared not inaptly to one of India's temples, where the outline is lost under the amazing delicacy of traceries. The equivoke is possible, only because the author is a perfect model of the Gauda style, whose distinguishing features are the love for long compounds, the heaping up of epithets, forcible and resonant sounds rather than smoothness and delicacy, alliteration, etymologising, and hyperbole. He displays a baffling acquaintance with all the lore of his day, which enables him to confound even his commentators by the subtlety of his mythological allusions and his references to facts of nature or human life, and he employs a varied and rechercé vocabulary, and the most varied figures of sound and sense, but above all alliteration. The punning is incessant" - A. Berriedale Keith, Classical Sanskrit Literature (1923)
  
  
• "(O)ne of the most extraordinary works in Sanskrit literature. (...) A rather slight love story, the novella is almost a Sanskrit Finnegans Wake in the density of its language: nearly every word is a pun -- even a double or triple pun -- extended metaphors reach Himalayan heights, and many sentences carry double meanings (.....) (E)nough of Subandhu's story emerges from his complex raga of language to allow an appreciation of his achievement." - Steven Moore, The Novel: An Alternative History - Beginnings to 1600 (2010)

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Subandhu's Vāsavadattā, which probably dates to the sixth century, is, as translator Louis H. Gray notes in his lengthy Introduction: "the oldest romantic novel in India". There are a number of Sanskrit works of prose fiction (often with interspersed poetry) -- notably also Daṇḍin's What Ten Young Men Did -- but the literature is mainly known for its plays and poetry, with even narrative works often in (epic) verse; as was also the case elsewhere until fairly recently, the prose-novel was the exception.
       Vāsavadattā is unusual in that it is so much a language-focused work of prose: it does tell a (slight) story but, as Gray suggests, was: "apparently being written to display its author's skill in rhetoric, rather than his inventive powers in fiction". Considering how it might be appraised, literarily, Gray (writing in 1913 ...) suggests:

Here the 'personal equation' must inevitably play a part, and here the fundamental difference between Oriental and Occidental concepts must be duly recognised. In the West the subject-matter comes first in nearly every form of literary composition; and the more tense and nervous the people, the more simple and direct is the style. In the East, on the contrary, the form is often more important than the matter, especially in periods of hyper-civilisation, such as was that during which Subandhu wrote. We must, therefore, consider the Vāsavadattā from the luxuriant atmosphere of the land of its author, not from the 'practical' point of view of the West.

     The slender thread of narrative in the Vāsavadattā is embellished with many forms of literary adornment, which, indeed, constitute by far the major portion of the work. First and foremost among these embellishments stands the śleṣa [श्लेष] or 'paronomasia'

possessed a 〈sweet koel-voice〉 pleasing the ear, expanded 〈love〉, gave a 〈charming colour to women〉, 〈delighted in learned sages〉, possessed 〈good fortune〉 easy for all to gather, spread abroad an abundance of 〈gold〉, and surpassed his 〈foes〉, while the damsels were filled with a thousand 〈〈anxieties〉〉, were sought by 〈〈lovers〉〉, were charming because of their 〈〈coral necklaces〉〉, and were at the 〈〈wanton age〉〉.

a damsel about eighteen years of age with her hips girt round with the bond of a girdle which was the gate of the city of delight of her thighs; which was the golden rampart of the great treasure-house of the city of joy; which was a trench for the line of the tendril of down

thinking of Kandarpakētu as if he were carven on her heart, which was emptied of all its faculties, as if he were engraved there, inlaid, riveted, swallowed up, joined by strongest cement, entered into the frame of her bones, within her vitals, flecked with her marrow's pith, enveloped in her breath, placed in her inmost soul, liquefied in her sheltering blood, distributed through her flesh; as if mad, as if deaf, as if dumb, as if listless, as if abandoning all her faculties, as if swooning, as if blasted by a planet, as if surrounded by a series of the billows of the sea of youth, as if enveloped by the bonds of love, as if pierced by Kama's flowery arrows, as if reeling from the venom of the thought of love, as if shaken by the arrows of the contemplation of beauty, as if bereft of life by the winds of Malaya

It is not pornographic ; it is, at worst, unmoral, though its rigid adherence to all conventions, both in letter and, I think, in spirit, renders even unmorality almost too harsh an accusation. From an Indian point of view, unlightened by the radiance of Christianity and the morality which it inculcates, I should not hesitate to term the Vāsavadattā a moral work, especially in view of the conditions of life in mediaeval India. Its atmosphere, luxuriant though it be, has never seemed to me to be debasing.

- M.A.Orthofer, 14 May 2020

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Links:

• Motilal Banarsidass publicity page
• Vásavadattá - text
• The Vásavadattá - Sanskrit text, ed. Fitzedward Hall

• See Index of Sanskrit literature
• See Index of Indian literature
• See Index of Bilingual editions under review
• See Index of Books Written Before 1900

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About the Author:

       Subandhu (वासवदत्ता) probably lived around the sixth century.

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