The Salibhadra-Dhanna-Carita (The Tale of the Quest for Ultimate Release by Salibhadra and Dhanna): A Work in Old Gujarati Critically Edited and Translated, with a Grammatical Analysis and Glossary.

• Author: CAILLAT, COLLETTE
• Position: Review

The Salibhadra-Dhanna-Carita (The Tale of the Quest for Ultimate Release by Salibhadra and Dhanna): A Work in Old Gujarati Critically Edited and Translated, with a Grammatical Analysis and Glossary. By ERNEST BENDER [+]. American Oriental Series, vol. 73. New Haven: AMERICAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY, 1992. Pp. vi + 573. $52.

[The following review appeared originally in the Bulletin de la Societe de linguistique (1994) and is here translated by Edwin Gerow, with emendations and corrections of the author and the permission of the Societe de linguistique de Paris.]

In ancient and medieval India, compositions termed carita (caritra) celebrated the "life," the pious "conduct" of holy persons who lived in conformity with the model established by the Jina (fifth-fourth c. B.C.), and, who, in that way, illustrate the philosophical and religious doctrines propounded by Jams and by Jainism. There exist a great number of examples of such tales, composed in various Indo-Aryan languages (Sanskrit, "Jaina" Prakrit, and various "vernacular" tongues, among which are, in the west of India, Old and Middle Gujarati).

The versified tale (raso) entitled "The Adventures of Salibhadra and Dhanna"--here edited, translated, and annotated by Ernest Bender--is attributed to one Matisa(ga)ra, who appears to be of Gujarati origin. Likewise, it is in northern Gujarat and in the neighboring state of Rajasthan that the quite numerous manuscripts transmitting the tale have been copied--the oldest of which available to E.B. dates to 1624, the most recent, to 1828.

These details must be taken into account as one seeks to define precisely the language of this work, whose manuscript tradition gives evidence of multiple variants (to a listing of which pp. 142-302 of the present work are devoted). In addition, the editor notes quite rightly that the choice of a "vernacular" language is here determined by the obvious intention of Matisara: to educate a bourgeois public, evidently rich and cultivated, although largely ignorant of the prestigious language of the time, Sanskrit. The author employs therefore an idiom then commonly used among traders, who, on occasion, commissioned public recitations and performances. E.B. designates this language as "Old Gujarati," probably better to emphasize the contrasts between it and the Gujarati of the twentieth century, and because-apparently--he considers unimportant (in this study) the fact that the various Neo-Indo-Aryan (NIA) tongues normally...