माधवानल-कामकंदला-प्रबन्धः- Madhavanala-Kamakandala-Prabandha: Volume- 1 (An Old and Rare Book: Only 1 Quantity Available)

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From prehistoric times, India possessed a fascinating wealth of folk-lore. Literary men from Bhasa downwards have drawn freely upon it; and all literatures, Sanskrit, Prakrit, Apabhramśa, Old and Modern, glisten with its golden threads.

The Jatakas, the lost Brhatkatha, the Kathasaritsagara, the Brhatka-thamanjari and the Brhatkathasamgraha are the reputed store-houses of popular fiction. Pancatantra is another such collection with an all-world fame. Other favourite sources drawn upon by Indian authors were the so-called "King Vikrama-cycle stories"-the Simhasanadvatrimsika, and the Vetalapancа-vimsatika. Sukasaptati is another fruitful source of popular tales.

Chandragupta II, the Gupta Emperor and the traditional Vikramaditya of Ujjayini, is the hero of many miraculous tales and is styled "Para-duhkha-bhanjana," the reliever of people in distress. He is the King Arthur of India, who with his gallant knights" rode abroad redressing human wrongs.

At one time there was scarcely a house in Gujarat perhaps in many parts of India, where King Vikramaditya's exploits were not listened to with rapt attention. Samalabhatta (Samvat 1760-1825) an 18th century Gujarati poet compares their recital with Ramayana; accordingly, popular imagination, highly exercised over Vikrama, produced a number of other tales independently of Sanskrit sources, such as the " Vikrama Khapara cora rasa.

With classical influence on the wane, fiction came into popular favour in Gujarat, as a contemporaneous tendency in Hindi and Bengali literature of folk-tales rendered in verse; and many authors diverted their attention from religious to secular literature. Even dharmakathds were presented as portraits of contemporary real life. The popular fictions, unlike religious stories, were not allegorical, nor did the didactic element in them subordinate the human. They were romances pure and simple.

The author of the Prakrit poem Vasudevahindi, insisted that romantic stories should be utilised for writing dharmakathas; or to say in other words, dharmakatha should be properly diluted with good love-stories in order to achieve the best results. Udyotanasuri, the author of Kuvalayamala laid down that a story should be like a newly wedded wife, decked with ornaments auspicious, moving with graceful steps, sentimental, soft in speech, and ever pleasing to the minds of men.

The general public, as was perfectly natural, took a fancy to the Kathas in which love was the central motive. The Jaina and the non-Jaina poets of Gujarat knew these human weaknesses well. Accordingly dharma-katha, with this object in view, was given a peculiar turn in Gujarat. The stories of kings did not appeal to the commercial classes; but the social romance dealing with the love-affairs of a nagarasetha, or a wealthy man's daughter, with acquisition of wealth as a substitute for heroism, and renunciation according to Jaina tenets as the end of life, caught the popnlar imagination.

Madhavanala-Kamakandala-Katha, however, has a unique interest of its own where true love is illustrated through two persons, who were each other's counterpart, as it were.

The greatness of these story-tellers lies in their matchless style and wonderful power of story-telling, in presenting didactic and worldly maxims in striking parallelisms; and in presenting the romantic atmosphere of early fiction, and thereby providing a valuable literature of escape from the morbid influences of their times.

A characteristic common to all of them was predominence of the miraculous: witch-craft, incantation, transformation of the human body, revival of the dead, transition from one body into another were freely introduced. Fantastic adventures were no less common. Many of them. had bourgeois setting, and described voyages and commercial enterprises. Robbery, seduction and kidnapping were by no means neglected.

They portrayed a free society. They spoke of co-education and of women free, educated and versed in the fine arts; of head-strong feminists; of courtezans, highly cultured and loyal; of a certain degree of general education. Love, intense and spontaneous, or betrayal of it, provided the principal motive; and ordinarily the miseries of lovers, parted by accident or intention sustained the sentimental interest of the story.

Prahelika, or a riddle, was a literary feature which they had inherited from their Sanskrit forbears, as mentioned by Dandin in his Kavyadarśa, as having sixteen varieties of the same. Heroine after heroine goes about offering riddles to men, after having solemnly resolved to marry only the happy suitor who is clever enough to solve them. Perhaps, in absence of public literary life, this was the only kind of cleverness which appealed to intelligent women. The Samasya-Vinoda occurs in the Madhavanala-Pra-bandha at as many as three places covering over two hundred verses (Anga V, duha 128-172; Anga VI, daha 643-761; and Anga VIII, duha 146-185).

It is very common to find the description of pangs of love of a nayika (heroine) on separation from her lover given in dramas and in poems popularly known as seasonal songs or songs of the Twelve-months' cycle of the year the Baramasi songs. These constitute one of the principal items in the repertory of popular feminine music all over India even now, and especially so in Gujarat and Bengal. (See Kamakandala-Viraha Bara-Masa, Anga VI, duha 517-614). The romance of Madhavanala-Kamakandala by Ganapati is unique in describing the pangs of the hero also at the separation from his beloved (Anga VII, dūhá 137-172). Over and above these two songs of separa-tion, the poem indulges in a pleasant description of the pleasures and pastimes of the united lovers starting the description at all the three places from Fålguna, the month of Spring (Anga VIII, duhà 16-136).

The tale of Madhavanala-Kamakandala-Prabandha, is a tale linked up to the Vikrama-cycle stories of wild, romantic love which fascinated Gujarata, which is possibly the land which fostered its growth from small beginnings in a Sanskrit prose-version intermixed with occasional verses partly with a direct beating on the text, and partly in the form of quotations from other anthologies. The performance of Ganapati is unique in medieval Indian vernacular literature of the early 16th century as a composition designed on the canons of a Sanskrit mahakavya, expressed in the current style of Prakrit and Apabhramsa Prabandhas.

The Madhavanala-Kamakandala-Prabandha (Vol. I) published in 1942 as G. O. S. No. 93, was out of stock for long. Its editor Prof. M. R. Majumdar has, in his learned preface, already thrown sufficient light on its importance from the literary and sociological points of view. It is therefore needless to harp upon it once more.

The reprint of the present volume is made possible due to 50% grant sanctioned by the Director of Languages, Govt. of Gujarat. I am especially thankful to Prof. Hasit Buch, Ex-Director of Languages and Shri N. B. Vyas, the present 1/c. Director of Languages for their active co-operation and personal interest in the reprint of this work.

1 thank my colleague Shri B. P. Pandya, Research Officer, for carefully going through the proofs.

I also express my thanks to Shri B. M. Shah, Manager, M. S. University Press and his colleagues in their sincere effort in printing the volume during the stipulated period.