Ancient India abounded in stories that travelled to
its east and west, serving as source for even a much later work by a dramatist
as pivotal as William Shakespeare, according to new-age author Sumedha Verma
Ojha who specializes in Mauryan period.
This is because Boccaccio’s famed story of ten nights itself was
influenced by 6th-century Indian author Gunadhya’s Brihatkatha—which was
adapted by a Shaivite named Somadeva in his Kathakasaritsagara five centuries
later—travelling from India westward to Florence via Turkey. “The Decameron
uses the same Brihatkatha concept of stories within stories, which is a typical
Indian way of narration,” Prof Ojha told a session on ‘Trading in Stories’
delivered at Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA).
Shakespeare (1564-1616) could have first read The Decameron’s French
translation by Petrarch (14th-century Renaissance poet Francesco Petrarca) and
also its English version (The Palace of Pleasure) by William Painter who died
in 1595. “So this is how a story has travelled from Pataliputra to Florence and
from there to England,” observed the speaker at the IGNCA lecture series under
Project Mausam: Maritime Routes and Cultural Landscapes earlier this week.
A Patna-born former bureaucrat who now lives in Geneva with her family,
Prof Ojha’s lecture zoomed in on the oral and literary traditions that have for
millennia, since the days of Harappa and Mohenjodaro, flown across land and sea
with the monsoons, which carried ships, traders and their stories. The focus
was on the 1st millennium BCE and its turn into the Common Era.
Citing an example of ancient Indian stories moving to the east, Prof
Ojha, whose debut book Urnabhih is a Mauryan tale of espionage, adventure and
seduction, noted in the hour-long talk that the Mahabharata had an interesting
version in Indonesia among its versions abroad.
Called Hikayat Pandawa Jaya, it has a description of Lord Krishna
arriving at Hastinapur to broker peace ahead of the Kurushetra War. The way the
Yadava king enchants women in the locality is described in a way strikingly
similar to how Lord Shiva’s charisma is narrated in classical Sanskrit writer
Kalidasa’s celebrated play Kumarasambhava, she pointed out.
Moving towards the topic of ancient trade routes, Prof Ojha pointed out
that a critical war Chadragupta Maurya (321-297 BC) fought with Seleucus I
Nicator saw the Greek hero defeated but gifted with 500 war elephants. The
progeny of the jumbos had a definite role in subsequent historical changes in
places as far as Italy, she cited, referring to the 207 BC Battle of Metaurus
between Rome and Carthage.
“The world was more connected in the past than we have ever thought—in
many strange and even subterranean ways,” the speaker pointed out.
IGNCA’s ‘Project Mausam’ is a multi-disciplinary project that rekindles
long-lost ties across nations of the Indian Ocean ‘world’ and forges new
avenues of cooperation and exchange. The project, launched by India in
partnership with member states, aims to enable a significant step in recording
and celebrating this important phase of world history from the African, Arab
and Asian-world perspectives.
No comments:
Post a Comment