Essay name: Tilakamanjari of Dhanapala (study)
Author:
Shri N. M. Kansara
Affiliation: Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda / Department of Sanskrit Pali and Prakrit
This is an English study of the Tilakamanjari of Dhanapala, a Sanskrit poem written in the 11th century. Technically, the Tilaka-manjari is classified as a Gadyakavya (“prose-romance�). The author, Dhanapala was a court poet to the Paramara king Munja, who ruled the Kingdom of Malwa in ancient west-central India.
Chapter 16 - The Tilakamanjari as a Sanskrit novel
101 (of 138)
External source: Shodhganga (Repository of Indian theses)
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981
a follower of Brahmanical faith; the flying elephant symbo-
lizes the divine assistance available to the devout follo-
wers.
Viewed from this symbolical angle the TM affords a gli-
mpse of the fourth dimension.
(vi) CHARACTER AND LOCATION :-
The sense of the visual interaction between cha-
racter and landscape can be as striking a feature of fiction
as a necessary element in cinema. While the twentieth-century
development of movies has sharpened the writer's awareness
of the technique, effective landscape is not essentially a
modern device.
367 Dhanapala, and for that matter all writers of classi-
cal Sanskrit prose romances like Subandhu, Bāṇa, Dandin and
others, are very much fond of giving elaborate pictures of
the cities, the palaces, and the gardens, the temples, the
river-banks, the lakes, the lying-in chambers and etc., whe-
re the action of the novel takes place. Dhanapāla's descri-
ptions of Ayodhya and Kāñci, the royal palaces of Meghavāha-
na and Tilakamañjarī, the Mattakokila garden, the Adrstapā-
ra lake and the sandy shore thereof, the Jain temples, the
Ratnakūta island, the Vindhya forest, the Aśoka tree in the
the Kusumakara garden -- all these serve as a luxuriously
beautiful and appropriate background for, and 'location' of
various actions in the TM.
367. Tech. Mod%3B Fict., p. 122. 112.
