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 (鈥減rose-romance鈥�). 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
90 (of 138)
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pictures the rows of villagers standing in wait for the app-
oaching royal procession of Samaraketu when he starts on a
naval expedition. The successive series of scenes here con-
sists of the waiting villagers, with their peculiar dresses,
thinking habits, peculiar responses to the members of the
procession, their eagerness, the disadvantage taken of their
absence in their fields by government officials and robbers,
their exploitation by village money-lenders, their houses
and so on; all thesen are depicted in the form of a single
compound phrase in the garb of descriptive narration, though
actually it is a constantly moving focus on varios aspects
of village life.
The above specimens are given to illustrate how the
techniques which are deemed to be modern by modern critics
were in fact known even to medieval Sanskrit writers of pro-
se romance and herein lies the universal value and appeal
of Sanskrit prose romance as medieval Indian novel,
VII : DHANAP膧LA AND SOME ASPECTS OF MODERN
FICTIONAL TECHNIQUE :
331 (i) NARRATIVE CONVENTION :-
The commencement of Dhanapala's TM can be
classed as "the fairy-tale formula of 'Once upon a time
331. This section is based on the aspects of fictional tech-
nique discussed by Jonathan Raban in his book 'The
Technique of Modern Fiction', London, 1968.
