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 9 - The Sources and the the Author鈥檚 design
17 (of 39)
External source: Shodhganga (Repository of Indian theses)
Download the PDF file of the original publication
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
' 349 We of to-day, we must remember, do not read the same novel
that was listened to by the audience of Dhanapala's days.
Changes in manners and customs have wrought changes in our
outlook. We judge the books we read by our own preposse-
ssions and our own standards of behaviour. That is unfair
but inevitable. Yet, as Somerset Maugham emphasizes, what
makes a classic is not that it is praised by critics,
expounded by professors and studied in schools, but that
large numbers of readers, generation after generation,
have found pleasure and spiritual profit in reading it.
It is for this popular appeal that the Sanskrit poets
chose not to deviate from the beaten track, though they
did absorb new influences. And in order to secure their
place in the line of great masters of high fame Dhanap膩la
had to honour the poetic convention, which was not the
conscious work of a single mind but was spread over a long
per帽od of time and established by degrees by the influence
of several great writers commencing with v盲lm墨ki down to
Subandhu, B膩峁嘺 and Trivikrama.
We shall here try to examine the popularity of Dhana-
p膩la's motifs among the Sanskrit and Prakrit predecessors
and judge in contrast the extent of originality our author
has displayed in roping them up into his narrative for
his own purpose.
1
