Dashakumaracharita
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Dashakumaracharita (The narrative of ten young men, IAST: Daśa-kumāra-Carita, Devanagari: दशकुमारचरित) is a prose romance in Sanskrit, attributed to Dandin (दण्डी), believed to have flourished in the seventh to eighth centuries CE. However, there is some obscurity surrounding its textual tradition, the identity of the author and the date of composition.
It describes the adventures of ten young men, the Kumaras, all of whom are either princes or sons of royal ministers, as narrated by the men themselves (however, there are irregularities in the text). These narratives are replete with accounts of demigods, ghosts, prostitutes, gamblers, intrigues with voluptuous women, astonishing coincidences, cockfights, anthropophagy, sorcery, robberies, murders and wars. The reader is treated to some very striking passages; for instance, a seductive young girl (all of whose anatomical features are very frankly described) deftly prepares a fragrant meal of rice-gruel and vegetables for her prospective suitor in the sixth chapter of the Dashakumaracharita.
The text contains a specimen of lipogrammatic writing (a species of constrained writing). At the beginning of the seventh chapter of the Dashakumaracharita, Mantragupta is called upon to relate his adventures. However, during the previous night of vigorous lovemaking, his lips have been nibbled several times by his beloved; as a result, they are now swollen, making it painful for him to close them. Thus, throughout his narrative, he is compelled to refrain from using any labial consonants (प,फ,ब,भ,म).
The text
Most extant texts of Dashakumaracharita are composed of
- Purvapithika (पूर्वपीठिका, Prologue) divided into 5 chapters (Uchchhwasas, उच्छ्वास);
- The Dashakumaracharita proper, divided into 8 chapters;
- The Uttarapithika (उत्तरपीठिका, Epilogue), without any subdivisions.
Some text at the beginning and the end of Dashakumaracharita proper has been lost; thus it contains only eight of the ten narratives, and furthermore, the stories of Rajavahan and Vishruta are incomplete. The 1st and the 3rd parts seem to have been added later by various authors (some of whom have tried to mimic the style of the original); indeed, there are several disparate versions for these parts in existence.
