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

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