FACT AND FICTION IN HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHIES

DR D. SRIDHARA BABU

In the vast Sanskrit literature we have abundant literary sources for reconstructing Indian History. It is recognised that certain Vedic hymns, the material contained in the later Vedic texts and Puranas are useful as sources of early Indian History. The reference in the Rigveda to Gaathas, Naaraasamsis, herald the existence of the very ancient oral historical tradition, which is not separated from the ritualistic performances. In the later Vedic age it is said that the traditions of history were moulded into five distinct forms of literature: l) Gaatha, 2) Naaraasamsi, 3) Aakhyaana 4) Itihaasa, 5) Puraana. The account of these forms of literature is critically dealt with in V. S. Pathak’s work “Ancient Historians of India” and also P. Horsch’s book written in German “Die vedische Gaatha-und Sioka-liluratur.” Long lists of geneologies of kings became part and parcel of Puraanas. They developed into a category called Vamsaanucarita, which became one of the five integral parts of Puraana. Scholars like F. E. Pargiter and others tried to reconstruct the ancient historical traditions with their royal geneologies found in the Puraanas. The traditions, preserved in the ancient Puraanas, form the main source of information for the history of the earliest period and for the period before 6th century B. C. The Buddhist and Jain literatures of the succeeding period form a valuable source of history, supplementary and corrective to the evidence of Puraanas. For the later period, beginning with the time of imperial Guptas (4th century A. D.), we have no texts like Puraanas, giving the bare dynastic lists. Although Indian literature practically ignores the history of the long period of one thousand years that follow, it does not totally cease to be of help. Among the vast mass of Sanskrit texts we find two forms of literature that contribute to our knowledge of history, viz., local chronicles and historical biographies.

The references in Kautilya’s Arthasastra to the royal archives and Hiuen Tsang’s reference to officials, whose responsibility was to maintain the written records, presuppose the existence of the source-material for the dynastic history preserved in the different royal courts.

We find certain local chronicles, which are presumably composed on the basis of such dynastic records of royal courts, retained and continued in Kashmir, Gujarat, Sindh, Nepal and Assam. Among these local chronicles Kalhana’s ‘Rajatarangini’ is an outstanding one. It is a history of Kashmir written completely in verse, in 1149-50 A D. The author refers to eleven ancient works of scholars and also Nilamatapuraana as his source material. He inspects also ordinances (saasana) of former kings relating to religious foundations and grants, laudatory inscriptions (Prasastipatta) as well as written records (sastra). The previous chronicles mentioned by Kalhana are no longer extant as in the case of material in the royal archives mentioned by Arthasastra and also historical records maintained by officials referred to by Hiuen Tsang. Why these chronicles are not preserved? My revered Professor Heinz Bechert offers an explanation that after the fall of a dynasty, those chronicles were not preserved because they no longer considered to be of general interest. R C. Majumdar explains the same point with somewhat different words. He says that “these chronicles unless raised to the status of a literary work of the type of Rajatarangini’ or including pretentious or sacred works like Puranas are not likely to long survive the fortunes of the dynasty whose history they recorded.”

From the seventh century A. D. onwards certain writers took the lives of their patron-kings as the theme of their literary works and produced the historical biographies of kings. It seems that Bhatta Bana initiated the series of historical biographies by writing the Harshacharita, which celebrates his contemporary patron Sriharsha (7th century A. D.). Vincent Smith rightly observes that “Bhatta Bana gave in his Harshacarita much accurate and valuable information wrapped up in tedious affected rhetoric. The same comment is applicable to other historical biographies, produced in later times. The historical Kavyas cannot be regarded as proper history although they contain valuable information. They differ altogether from the historical chronicles in purpose and in treatment. In this sense the historical chronicles like Kalhana’s Rajatarangini and the presentation of facts therein is more of high standard from historical point of view. Instead of presenting facts in a disinterested prosaic manner, they present valuable historical facts with full use of literary fancy. The main purpose of these works is to produce aesthetic enjoyment among thereaders, creating a literary effect with their descriptions rather than giving a truthful and systematic account of the life and times of their patrons. At the same time, one cannot under-estimate their importance as the sources of history. An enormous patience and a good acquaintance with the historical and literary writings are necessary to separate the factual statements from the ones containing ornamental expressions, only then one would be able to see the facts of history through the veil of poetic description. Sometimes the historical biographies of kings are submerged in the texts, intended to illustrate the rules of Sanskrit and Prakrit grammar, as in the case of Kumaarapaalacharita, an account of king Kumaarapaala and other Chalukya rulers. One cannot neglect the importance of the Ramacharita, which is a valuable source of history of the Palas of Bengal, only because it is composed in a Sanskrit figure of speech called slesha, giving two different meanings simultaneously, one about the story of Rama of the ancient epic Ramayana and the second about the career of Ramapala of Bengal who flourished in the twelfth century A. D. In spite of these facts in style as R. C. Majumdar comments this work is really, “a fairly good specimen of objective treatment of history”.

The following are some more examples of historical Kavyas, produced in the northern part of India. The Navasaahasaankacharita by Padmagupta (ca. 1000 A. D.), in which one finds the allusion to the history of Sindhuraja of Malva and the Vikramaankadevacharita by Bilhana, in which the poet glorifies Vikramaditya VI, a Chalukya king of Kalyani, belonging to the 11th century; Somapaalavilaasa by Jalhana, which deals with the history of Somapala of Rajapuri, the Prithvirajavijaya, which celebrates the victory of the king Prithviraja over Ghori (1191 A. D.), the Kumaarapaala Charita by Hemacandra, which deals with Kumarapala of Gujarat, belonging to the twelfth century.

According to the present knowledge we can say that the Madhuravijaya written by Gangadevi, as the first historical biography in Sanskrit useful for history in South India, known to us before the fifteenth century. The Madhuravijaya narrates the story of the extension of the Vijayanagara rule into the Tamil region and describes the main factors which culminated in victory over the Sultan of Madurai by Kampana in 1371. In grateful regard for his patron, Rajanath II, the son of Arunagirinatha of Dindima family, composed the Saalvaabhyudaya describing the activities of Saalvanarasimha (1486-92). It appears that this poem was composed about 1480 A. D., while Saalvanarasimha was still a governor with his capital at Chandragiri. The Achyutarayabhyudaya of Rajanatha III, one of the members of the Dindima family, is a useful guide of the rule of Achyutaraya (1530-42 A. D.) at Vijayanagar. The Varadambikaparinaya of Tirumalamba is also written to celebrate Achyutaraya. Vamana Bhatta Bana wrote a biography of King Vema (Pedakomati) called Vemabhupaalacharita alias Viranaaraayanacharita. The Raghunathabhyudaya of Ramabhadramba shows a good historical sense and narrates a biography of Raghunathanayaka of Tanjore. The expedition to Cheogi (a southern kingdom) by Rajarama, the successor of Sambhu of Maharashtra kingdom, is described by Kesava in his Rajaramacharita. Sridhara Venkatesa’s work, Sahendravilaasa deals also with the Maharashtra kings, starting with the praise of Shivaji for defeating Muslims and in due course describing how the King Eka retired after consecrating Saha (1684). He also narrates how Saha supported Rajarama when the latter came to Chengi. A Champu called Dharmavijaya by Nalla alias Bhuminatha is also about the life of Saha. Jagannatha’s Sarbharajavilasa and Anantanarayana’s Sarabhojicharita narrate the biography of Sarabha, who succeeded his brother Saha in 1712. Nearly in the eighteenth century Venkateswara wrote a work called Bhasalavamsavali about the Maratha kings of Tanjore.

Among the South Indian historical biographies I evaluated three texts: the Madhuravijaya, the Achyutarayabhyudaya and the Vemabhupalacharita for my doctoral dissertation which was submitted to the University of Goettingen, West Germany, in 1973 and published there itself in 1975. In that study I applied a method to examine the material in the light of Arthasastra and Dharmasastra traditions. In connecting the material with traditional norms, I took mainly Manu as a representative of Dharmasastra tradition and Kautilya as a representative of the Arthasastra tradition, because there are good reasons to believe that these well-known classical writers were considered to be authoritative still during the time of our texts. The fruits of this method of study are–what part of traditions was still alive during the time of my texts among the royal families and what part of it has undergone certain changes. The second method which I adopted for my study is as follows. Basically the historical biographies could be dealt with in three different ways: 1. as sources of political history. The veteran historians of South India like K. A. N. Sastri and N. Venkataramanaiah already studied and evaluated them from this point of view; 2 as literary works of art intended for aesthetic enjoyment; this task belongs to the sphere of literature. The historians of Sanskrit literature have dealt with this problem under the headings of “Historical Kavyas”; lastly as sources of the history of politico-religious values and history of culture. This third aspect is the goal of my study. I examined the material contained in the texts to assess the public and private life of kings in South India as well as its ideological background during the period of Muslim invasions, i.e., fourteenth to sixteenth century A. D.

The following lines of my presentation deal with some illustrations from my study.

The protection of Dharma is the main duty of a Hindu king. In the context of dangerous threat to the Hindu Dharma our texts depict how it was threatened and how many temples had been plundered and uncared for. Gangadevi, in her Madhuravijaya, graphically describes how Hindu priests were persecuted and how the holy cows were slaughtered. She has also narrated the pitiable state of the temple at Srirangam. The description of political and religious conditions given by Gangadevi are confirmed by South Indian inscriptions and also by the accounts of Muslim historians, particularly the frightful depictions of those days by Ibn Batuta;

The heroes of our texts and their performance of Hindu rites and rituals and the worship of Hindu gods give us an abundant information regarding the religious activity of those days. The performances of the Mauktikatulapurushadana by the king as a donor. Among the Vijayanagara rulers, as in the case of other South Indian kings, there was a practice of performing the ceremony Tulapurushadaana, the gift of the weight of a man in gold or pearls. The Achyutarayabhyudaya refers to such a ceremony at Kanchi by Achyutaraya. The same text enumerates sixteen kinds of gifts offered by the king as a part of his daily duty. Such references are useful for our purpose. Particularly we have an epigraphical confirmation of the Mauktikatulapurushadana by Achyuta to be found at Kalahasti, Kanchi and Lepakshi. Especially references regarding the worship of Chandi and Indra’s banner (Indradhwaja), found in the Vemabhupalacharita are valuable from the point of view of the history of religions. In the case of the Chandipuja, we have the evidence of the worship of the mother goddess, belonging to the left-wing tradition of Sakteya cult (Vamachara). The worship of Indradhwaja is mentioned in the Mahabharata, the Vishnudharmottarapurana, etc., and also a detailed discussion of which is found in the seventeenth chapter of Bhoja’s Samaranganasutradhara. The performance of the same by King Pedakomatindra, to be blessed with a son, is an example which exemplifies how the practice of erecting Indra’s banner and its process of worship which is of ancient origin is perpetuated even during the mediaeval period among the Hindu royal families. The performance of the consecration before the deities at Tirupati and Kalahasti and also the king’s visit to different temples during his military campaigns give us the real religious state of affairs of those days.

From these texts we come to know how a king acts according to certain traditional religio-political values keeping in view the divine models from the Hindu pantheon and human models from the mythological lore. The historical biographies under consideration offer us political means and measures, such as the six methods of foreign policy (shadgunya), four means (upayas), the powers (sakti) and the employment of spies, continuing the ancient traditions of polity regarding the military affairs, valuable information in connection with the military command, the causes of war, seasons for an attack, divisions of the army, weapons, encampments, battle scenes and also the measures to be taken after war. These texts furnish also the concept of the Digvijayayatra and details concerning celebration of the king’s departure for military campaign and also celebration after the achievement of the victory.

The detailed descriptions of the environment, in which the king’s public and private activities take place in the texts, stand as a valuable information regarding the form of kingship existed in the mediaeval period in South India.

A study, basing on the historical biographies, poses not only the problem of separation of fact from fiction but also the problem of identifying the co-relation between politico-religious precepts of ancient tradition and the concrete practices contained in the texts. The first problem of acquiring facts from these biographies of kings as a historical datum, if Possible, have to be confirmed by the facts from the other sources of history. If such a confirmation is not possible facts acquired from these sources bring the historical biographies a unique honour of furnishing additional factual material for reconstructing political or cultural history. The second problem of precept and practice has to be tackled in another way. There, one has to be careful in distinguishing traditional value-patterns in the form of “stereotypes”, or “arche-types” from concrete existing practices. Such a study fructifies in determining the historical sequence of changing values and at the same time values unaltered and unchanged in continuation of ancient ones. The historical biographies have a special stature in furnishing a fuller description of an event in contrast to other sources, particularly piecemeal information regarding gift-deeds by kings in the form of inscriptions. Because the works were composed by the contemporaries of the royal heroes, the value of them is not negligible in spite of their poetical nature.

Back