Panorama of Sanskrit Literature

Preface The Panorama of Sanskrit Literature purports to be a collection of my papers, published, over the years, in the leading journals of the land, besides a host of Felicitation/Commemoration volumes, though some of the articles were written specifically for the present volume. The utility of bringing out in a single volume the writings strewn in a number of journals can scarcely be over-emphasized. It enables one to peruse at one place what otherwise has to be exhumed from a variety of obscure sources.

The Panorama spans a 'wide spectrum of literature and is marked by a pleasing richness and variety of contents. Beginning with Valmiki's immortal epic, it grapples with a string of tricky problems related to such diverse disciplines as Grammar, Poetics, Textual criticism and Belles Letters. It ventures to make forays into history and Numismatics as well.

The volume thus provides a sumptuous fare to the cultured reader, keen to fathom the intricacies of the various aspects of Sanskrit Literature.

The papers included in the Panorama are thematically arranged under six heads. The bunch of the first three papers’ seeks to delve into the endless deviations that the Rifmaya~U1-episodes have undergone, down the ages, in both the indigenous and alien R/illliiYl7lla: thereby giving rise to a plethora of versions of the epic-story. It also means to determine the rationale that prompted the baffling variations. It is interesting that there is' hardly any alien version of the Ramayana-episodes that cannot be traced to the Indian sources, howsoever perplexing it may apparently be. It appears that in the course of the cultural exchanges spread over several centuries, the unending versions of the Ramayana had flooded the countries of South East Asia. Puzzled by. the massive deviations in the epic story, they admitted such of the versions, even in the case of the independent episodes, as suited their genius and social milieu.

While the Hanuman taka does not scruple to detail with abandon the sexual sports of the divine couple Rama and So much in the manner of the Bhusundi-Ramayana, besides throwing up a number of variation's in the well-known episodes, this so-called nataka cast its spell on Goswami Tulsidasa to the extent that he deemed it best to reproduce several of its stanzas in the vernacular garb. With the Kavyadarsa rests the credit for preserving a peculiar version of the episode Of Ravana- Vadha which otherwise is not known to suffer any variations. As revealed by the Kavyadarsa verse (II. 302) one more version of 'Ravana's slaughter' was current in India. and the neighboring countries of Tibet and Magnolia till at least the seventh century A.D., according to which Ravana was killed by Rama in his royal mansion in Lanka rather than on the battle-ground.

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