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 17 - Bana and Dhanapala—A study in contrast
8 (of 22)
External source: Shodhganga (Repository of Indian theses)
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never tax the credibility of the audience, as does the story
of Bāṇa's Kad.. And Dhanapāla's story is no less "replete
with tenderness of human love, beneficence of divine comso-
lation, the pathos and the sorrow of death and abiding hope
of reunion after death as a result of unswerving fidelity
22 to love" 'than is Bāṇa's Kad..
(ii) Motifs :-
According to Dr. Jagannath Pathaka, the pricipal
motifs utilized by Bāṇa in his Kad. are: the lack of a son,
a dream signifying imminent conception, union of lovers,
kidnapping of the hero, a parrot, a curse, love-letter,
aerial flight. To add to these, some of those in the HC are;
the propitiation of mystic lores, apparition of a giant,
conferring of a boon by a goddess, military expedition.
Though the principal motifs of Dhanapāla's TM seem
to be apparently similar to the above-mentioned ones of both
the prose-romances of Baṇa, they differ vastly in their
true nature, their narrative significance, their structural
disposition and their rational basis. Thus, though both Me-
ghavāhana and Tārāpīḍa are worried about the lack of a son,
the ways in which they obtain one are quite different; whi-
le the former undergoes a session of penance and faces the
tough test by the terrific Vetāla much in the same manner
as Śrī-Harṣavardhana's forefather Puṣpabhūti did for the
22.cf. HSL(K), p.324.
