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

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