Judhajit SarkarDepartment of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur Universityjudhajitsarkar2@gmail.com

Narrative Mode in Indian Kvya Literature: Understanding ComparativelyAbstractThe present study has a singular intention, which is to understand the development of the narrative mode in the Indian kvya literary form across time and using tools provided by comparative literary methodology. Conclusions reached or attempted to reach during this study would be gathered from and rooted in the texts under consideration here, namely the Blakna of Vlmki Rmyaa and Babhaa s Kdambar. The sole purpose of the conceptual tools, which one might need to take recourse to, would be to grasp the ways through which a literary system works. In the context of the present study, one might have easily added the qualifier Sanskritic, as both the aforementioned texts are composed in Sanskrit, if one was not aware of the non-Sanskritic origins of kvya and also, of the incorporation of several local prakrit and apabhramsas into the textual realm of kvya in its developed form. The striking commonality between the Rmyaa and Kdambar is that the story of both existed earlier. In the case of Rmayaa the story was present in the form of a now lost Rma-kath; whereas Kathsaritsgara, itself considered to be a reworking of Gundhyas paici narrative Bhatkath, supplied the story of Kdambar. Even if the a priori existence of Rma-kath can be contested, the fact that the story of Rma is not the singularly important aspect of the Rmyaa can be vouched from the narration by Nrada of the entire journey of Rma in the very beginning of the Blakna. The rationale behind choosing the Blakna for the purpose of the present study is that in it one can find the conceptual formulation of kvya as a literary form, not distributed into distinctive modal structures as yet. Babhaa s Kdambar, on the other hand, not only can be clearly categorized under the narrative mode but also has a discernible generic identity. The scheme of the present study would be to first situate the Rmyaa as the earliest specimen of kvya narrative, to see why it is called the adikvya, and then to follow the development of the narrative mode in the kvya form through Bas Kdambar. How the residues latent in the earlier textual models give each text its definitive shape, thus also shaping the mode to which the text belongs, would be one of the crucial things that this study would attempt to address. ___________________________________________________________________________1.In his short essay entitled Kadambarichitra Rabindranath says in his usual poetic manner that:... - , ; , , - , , ; , ... , , - , ?... (976-7)One of the reasons behind quoting this at length in the very beginning, to do an honest confession, is that one could not have thought of expressing differently what is said here. In fact, this study is only a humble attempt at filling in the gaps that the above-quoted passage leaves to the imagination of the readers. We might justifiably begin with the question that this passage, as quoted above, ends by asking. Having tried to make some rudimentary distinction of the Indian mind from the general human nature or on the basis of the formers visible non-interest in listening to or preserving what Rabindranath calls or story and its infinite patience for what European literary theory has doomed as digressions, Rabindranath asks quite pertinently- but why does the Indian psyche allow and forgive these apparent shifts of focus from the main plot of the story? Instances which he recalls in order to underline his contention are directly related to our study. One, of course, is Banabhattas Kadambari, which this essay of Rabindranath is particularly devoted to discussing. The other, interestingly, is Ramayana. There is no lack of aesthetic splendor in the Kiskindha and Sundarakanda, says he, but their place in the scheme of the narrative of Ramayana might seem to our modern taste to be like the weight of an unmovable rock, something that obstructs the flow of the story. He then goes on to say that only the tolerant India could pardon such diversions, and one might add, could derive aesthetic pleasure out of it.[endnoteRef:2] The immediate question that comes up here, and Rabindranath did not fail to notice it, is why? The present study intends to grapple with this question vis--vis the Balakanda of Ramayana and Banabhattas Kadambari with the aid of tools that as a student of Comparative Literature the present author is equipped with. [2: End Notes: The epithet he attributes to Bharatbarsha is , of which the English tolerant renders only one aspect. ]

Let us first identify the concomitant conceptual issues and their relevance in the context of our study. The aim of this study is to understand the beginnings of the narrative mode in Indian Kavya literary form and identify its structural peculiarities as it moves along the temporal axis. One might, of course, ask how does that help a reader of literature in any way? Does the knowledge (whatever that word means) of the structure of the mode to which a text belongs impinge on the way in which a reader connects with that particular text? To be more precise, what is a mode at all and what implication does it have on our overall understanding of a literary text? The definitional aspect can be grasped better as we proceed further. Suffice it to say at this point that if self-expression, at the very foundational level, can be thought to be a legitimate description of any literary articulation then there must also always be a way through which that expression is articulated or, to put it in more technical terms, textualized. Nobody, one presumes, will disagree that articulation of any form is not born, disseminated and heard/read in the realm of the pure abstract. It presupposes a concrete form, a palpable structure- be it a printed book, a handwritten manuscript, a YouTube video or a madari ka khel. I mention so many diverse examples in the same breath in order to point towards the number of mediums which articulations can inhabit. The only medium in case of a literary articulation is, of course, language, and the success (pardon this stereotype) of a literary work depends on the extent to which it can manipulate the possibilities inherent in language. Certainly when we say language of literature we are talking about a language different from that of ordinary speech. These are two separate semiotic systems, to quote Roland Barthes, each occasionally borrowing from and inflecting the other but maintaining their relative autonomy nevertheless. The semiotic system we call literature is constructed to serve a specific purpose which, for the sake of our convenience, can be named literary. However, this is not a conclusion that I shall impose on the arguments in what follows from the very outset. Rather, this is a point that requires to be arrived at from the literary evidences we have at our disposal. Returning to the question of mode, what can be said at the very elementary level is that mode is the way in which literary expressions are articulated. To put it in other words, mode mediates between imagination, which is abstract and its concretized expression, the resultant artifact, which we call literature. This concept of mode is derived, however, from the general practice of reading itself. In order to recognize a narrative and to be able to see[endnoteRef:3] its difference from a drama or a lyric, one does not need to be a student of literature. The only added responsibility that a student of literature has is to take cognizance of this reality of recognition and build his hypothesis based on that very reality. The ability to hypothesize, nonetheless, is predicated upon the existence of a method. The burden (and, also pleasure) of a student of Comparative Literature is that attempting to build a method from above is bound to land him/her into an epistemological collapse. A from above approach also runs the risk of losing sight of the fundamental principle of the disciplinary formation of Comparative Literature which insists on reworking methodology each time one has fresh data (Dev 91-96). What follows here is an endeavor to hear what the texts say about themselves in order to clarify our understanding of the nature of the literary modes- more specifically, the narrative mode- as foregrounded by/within the Kavya system. [3: The obvious reference is to scribal cultures. In the context of oral cultures the word just needs to be replaced by hear. The implication, however, remains the same- to recognize, either by seeing or by hearing or by any other means. ]

2.In the first sarga of the Balakanda of Valmiki Ramayana[endnoteRef:4] Valmiki asks Narada: [4: All the references to the Ramayana are made from the Gita Press edition of SrimadValmikiya Ramayan.]

The remaining sarga is constituted of Naradas response to this, where he describes to Valmiki in details what can be called, to recount Rabindranath, the story of Ramayana. The same story is told again in the third sarga (verses 10-39) with little or no alterations. What is etched in popular imagination as the beginning of Ramayana does not begin, in the literal sense, before the fifth sarga. This immediately inaugurates a fresh set of questions in the mind of the reader: What purpose does this prefacing the actual narration of the journey of Rama, which is what Ramayana is all about, serve? If the story of Ramayana is told and retold in the very beginning of the narrative and the beginning, middle and end already known, why compose the remaining seven sargas comprising of twenty-four thousand slokas? An argument of bad faith would be that the Balakanda is a latter addition, an interpolation so to speak, and Valmiki, in no sense, can be held responsible for such ostensible distraction in the plot. One cannot but invoke Rabindranath here and say that there would have been no interpolations, even if there were they could not have survived the test of time, if there was nobody to put up with them. Their survival across ages is in itself a testimony of their undeniable organic relation to the narrative strategy of Ramayana. Having said this one must also ask, what could have been the possible motivation behind the insertion of this preface-like description? The second sarga attempts to provide a possible answer to this. After having heard about ramacharitra from Narada, Valmiki goes to the banks of river Tamasa with his disciples to take a bath in the river and perform the daily rituals. Suddenly he feels the urge to take a stroll in the forest near the river. While roaming around the forest alone he sees two kraunca birds in the midst of love-making. All of a sudden an arrow, shot by a nisad, hits the male kraunca and kills it. Overwhelmed by grief for the wailing female kraunca Valmiki curses the nisad by uttering the archetypal verse. This makes Valmiki ask himself instantly: ? He then goes on to think:.

Recounting this old and oft-mentioned story of the birth of sloka from soka has a dual purpose here. On the one hand, it brings us directly to the definitional aspect of Kavya, and, on the other, helps to formulate a hypothesis on the organizational nuances of the narrative mode as developed within the Kavya system. Ramayana, as we know, is claimed to be the adikavya and its composer, Valmiki, is credited to be the first ever kavi, the adikavi. Thus Ramayana is imagined to inaugurate a tradition that would later develop and survive for centuries in the Sanskrit literary system. However, the bulk of Vedic literature, predating the Ramayana, that has come down to us makes us rethink this phenomenon which fetched Valmiki the status of the first-poet. What are we to do, then, with the suktas or the gitas which the Rg Veda and the Sama Veda respectively abound by? Or, for example, the Buddhist Jataka literature in Pali? Are these to be ignored as non-literature, interesting mainly to the historian of religion? All these questions can be dealt with and answered individually if one looks at them from a diachronic perspective. Before that let us note in passing that the term literature, when applied to the Indian Kavya literary scene, proves to be awfully inadequate as it fails to take into cognizance the ways in which the Indian literary tradition conceived of Kavya. Historically there are at least three distinct traditions which precede the composition of Ramayana and include, among other things, what in the modern sense can be conceived of as literature. Amongst these, unfortunately, its difficult to talk about the Jain tradition with any certainty as the authority of most, if not all, available texts belonging to the Jain canon does not go beyond the 5th century AD.[endnoteRef:5]The other two traditions, namely the Vedic and the Buddhist, whose antiquity we have little doubt about, require serious attention mainly because of two reasons. One, because they provide us with the insight useful for the understanding of the rupture brought forth by the utterance and two, because they also show the underlying thread of continuity running through the later literary traditions. Needless to say that any attempt at understanding literary phenomena as laid out in time presupposes the consciousness of both change and continuity (Das 11-15). Comparative literary historiography has taught us that as far as literature is concerned periods or epochs are never exclusive of each other. There is constant dialogue between literary periods, and tendencies subdued in one period seem to emerge with fresh vigor in another. Ours, therefore, is an approach both diachronic and synchronic. We wish to identify the changes brought forth by the Ramayana in the existing compositional situation while also placing it in a historical continuum, thus attempting to take into consideration the horizon of expectation within which Ramayana was born and which it extended. [5: The original Jain canon was contained in 14 Puvvas or old texts, which was taught directly by Mahavira to his disciples, the Gandharas or heads of schools. Soon the knowledge of these Puvvas was lost. Only one of Mahaviras disciples handed them down and they were preserved for the next six generations. Now, during the rule of Chandragupta Maurya, two centuries after Mahaviras death, there was a terrible famine in the Magadha region. This made Thera Bhadrabahu, the then head of the Jaina community, emigrate to Karnata in the South with a host of his disciples. During Bhadrabahus absence the head of the Jaina community was Stulabhadra, the last one who had the knowledge of the 14 Puvvas. Therefore, in order to preserve the knowledge of the sacred texts a council was convened at Pataliputra where 11 angas were compiled and the twelfth anga, the Ditthivaya, was organized by collating the remnants of the 14 Puvvas. Now, upon the return those who had emigrated there developed a great gulf between them and those who had stayed back at Magadha, ultimately resulting in the split of the Svetambaras and the Digamaras. In the course of time the authority of the canon compiled during the Pataliputra council began to be questioned by the Svetamabaras and after a point of time, even by the Digamabaras in the eyes of whom, too, the knowledge of the original canon was lost. As the danger of the canons being lost altogether began to be gradually felt a council was called for at Vallabhi in present day Gujarat around the middle of 5th or the beginning of the 6th century AD. This council was presided over by Devarddhi Ksamasramana and the 11 angas, as we have them now, were compiled and written down during this council. The twelfth anga, however, is lost altogether.]

There are several forms of composition of which one finds mention in the Vedas, some having clearly discernible link to the later Kavya tradition. Among these dana-stuti and prasasti[endnoteRef:6], gatha[endnoteRef:7], narasamsi[endnoteRef:8], katha and akhyana[endnoteRef:9] compositions can be seen to be forerunners of epic[endnoteRef:10] literature in India (Thapar 128). The narasamsi compositions are particularly important for in them the gradual secularization of theme is perceptible. If seen along the thematic axis, these are the earliest specimens the residues of which willy-nilly lead to the first gropings of epic compositions in the Indian literary cultures. A more direct thematic link, as far as the Ramayana is concerned, can be observed in the Buddhist canon in the form Dasharatha Jataka. Though the treatment of the Rama matter is very different in this version of the story, Romila Thapar argues, that the Jataka versions were not an attempt at an alternative version of the Ramayana seems evident from the absence of any rewriting of the epic as such in the Buddhist tradition(Thapar 648). This has led Thapar to argue in favor of a common source of the Rama story, the Ramakatha, which was differently received in different religious-cultural and most importantly language traditions. [6: Dana-stuti and Prasasti have almost the same characteristics. Dana-stuti hymns, scattered through the Rg Veda (VI.63, V.27, VI.47, V.30, VII.1, VIII.6), are eulogies on chiefs/rajas and deities who bestow generous gifts on grateful bards and priests. The prototype of the gift-giver is Indra and there are several compositions called the Indra-gathas where gratitude is expresses to Indra on the part of the jana whom Indra led successfully in a cattle-raid and subsequently in distributing the wealth bestowed, much of it on the priests(Thapar 128). Prasastis are also eulogies of mythical as well as historical figures and are to be found not only in the Vedas but also in several inscriptions, for example, the Allahabad prashasti of Samudragupta. The question of Valmiki to Narada in the very first sarga of the Balakanda, the archetypal , corresponds in tone to the overall fervor of the prasastis. ] [7: In Rg Veda Gatha is generally used to imply song or verse (X.85.6). Aitareya Aranyaka refers to gatha as metrical compositions and also makes a useful distinction between rc and gatha as having to do with the divine and the human respectively. Rc, which for euphonic reasons is changed into Rg, means praise. According to Aitareya Aranyaka, then, Rc is the praise of divine beings. Gatha, in contrast, deals with the more secular contents.] [8: Praise songs for men. Narasamsi compositions are often classed with gathas and together called gatha-narasamsi. ] [9: These were used for clearly ritualistic purposes. They could be both in verse and prose but the selection must be informed by the nature of the material. For example, akhyanas are almost invariably in prose when they purport to be historical. Ramayana variously calls itself katha (Ramayanikatha) and akhyana. ] [10: Used mainly to refer to the length of the text and its heroic tone, and not interchangeably with Mahakavya. ]

There are, nevertheless, other aspects in the pre-kavya tradition apart from the thematic ones which seem to enter the realm of kavya. Valmiki, as we know, is credited for inventing the vaktra- the eight syllable line, which is the basic compositional unit of mahakavya narration and is distributed in four padas to make a sloka. The ancestry of this formal unit can be traced back to the Rg Veda where compositions in eight syllable lines or anustubh abound. Interestingly enough, in the Rg Veda anusthubh is specifically a lyric meter. The epic-like narratives of the Vedas are mostly constructed in eleven syllable lines. This leads A K Warder to contend that structurally Kavya had its origin in the lyrical compositions rather than the narrative epical ones (Warder 20). The Mahakvya, though considered a genre within the Narrative Mode, can then be seen as springing out of the techniques used mainly in the Lyric Mode. The reason behind raising the issue of lyric here is simply to suggest that our attempts at delineating a literary mode will be fraught with innumerable difficulties if we do not look at the beginnings of that mode as situated at the crossroads of several others.If this is the existing literary backdrop against which the Ramayana was composed, what change can be imagined to have been brought into existence by the Ramayana then? In order to answer this we must look for the purpose for which these compositions were made. That the Jataka narratives were meant clearly for propagandist uses is a generally accepted view. In the context of the Vedic compositions, a small illustration from the Satapatha Brahman should suffice. Here (XIII 4.3) during an asvamedha yajna, a hotr is asked by the adhvaryu or the person in charge of the physical details of the sacrifice to sing or recount the akhyana of the Pariplava kings in order to raise his own yajamana above those described in the legend. The occasion of the composition is evidently the performance of the yajna. The purpose of composition is too apparent to require a postscript. Another important facet of the Vedas is the fact that they are believed to be compositions of seers who literally saw them. Veda, which for obvious reasons is also called sruti, means revealed knowledge and what is revealed is accepted as Truth. Though it has been suggested that the composers of the Vedas saw their creations as crafted (ibid.), later tradition almost invariably calls them rsis, not kavis and considers the Vedas nearer to sastras rather than kavya. On the contrary, what the Balakanda narrates is the very process of initiation of the poet in the composition of Kavya. The story of Rama is told to Valmiki and by the same token, to the reader/listener also. But what we call Valmiki Ramayana is not that story alone. One does not know nor has the intentions to know whether Valmiki was one person or many, whether he existed at all or not. The very imagination of him within the Ramayana as the composer of his own text is what brings forth the rupture in the existing compositional situation. He thus becomes the first ever kavi because he consciously constructs his own narrative. The Ramayana is not divinely revealed or created. It is imagined as having been constructed and organized by human hands or mouth. What Valmiki writes or composes cannot claim any novelty in terms of its story. It is about how that story is told that fetches it the status of Kavya. One must bear in mind that when Ramayana is composed rasasastra and alamkarasastra are still in their infancy. Therefore, it would be anachronistic to evaluate Ramayana in terms of the poetic principles developed by later day aestheticians. However, Ramayana itself provides some useful cues to unravel its strategies of narrativization, among which one we have quoted earlier vis--vis the structure of the sloka. Two other verses are quoted here which should further clarify our understanding of the Kavya narrative:i.

ii. ---------------------------------------- The first verse speaks of the co-existence of all the rasas in Ramayana, while the second points out what exactly one would gain by listening or reading this text: attain all the purusarthas. Almost all the later day rhetoricians are on the same footing in accepting the last one as the quintessential characteristic of any Kavya. The first verse, nevertheless, is of paramount importance to us as it underlines the omnibus nature of Mahakavya, a genre capacious enough to absorb and hold together traits from other poetic resources. 3.So far we have concerned ourselves with pinning down the difference of Kavya narrative from other preceding forms of composition and of narration, and we have seen that, at the very basic stage, a composition can be assigned the name of Kavya only when in it an activation of the human imagination and a conscious effort at expressing it in a palpable form can be detected. Ramayana begins or is imagined to have begun this new tradition, though by incorporating structural as well as thematic elements which were already in existence. It has been noted earlier that during the composition of Ramayana, which is indeed a wide span of time, rhetoric in Sanskrit had not yet reached maturity. In fact, Sanskrit itself was a relatively new language then. The language of the Vedas was an earlier variety of the Indo-European from which can be traced two parallel developments in different strata of population, one restrained by education and finally maturing in the form known as Sanskrit which was given stability by Panini for all times; and the other because of a rapid development among the masses resulted in various Prakrits including Pali(Das 348). It is generally accepted that the growth of a language far outpaces the growth of its cultural idiom. The form of Kavya narrative as evidenced in the Ramayana, therefore, seems to be relatively simpler (the entire narration is done with rare exceptions in sloka) for its situation in the early phases of the development of Sanskrit. Furthermore, Ramayana is the production of an age that witnessed the transition from the oral to the scribal culture. The universal tendency of any oral cultural milieu is to mould all forms of expression, both literary and otherwise, into verse patterns in order to ensure smoothness and ease of memorization. Even if one agrees that Ramayana as it has come down to us was produced within a burgeoning scribal culture the fact that this basic structure of oral composition was retained in it must be constantly borne in mind. A significant leap regarding the structuring of the narrative came with Banabhatta and his contemporaries. Their collective efforts ensured the inception of a new medium in the Kavya narrative system viz. gadyakavya. Sanskrit by Banas time[endnoteRef:11] had become matured enough to be able to accommodate prose as a valid medium for literary expression. The significance of Bana in Sanskrit literary history lies in his attempts at exploiting the potential of this new form to its fullest measure. Both Harsacarita and Kadambari are testimonies of his success in this endeavor. [11: One interesting thing about Bana is that, unlike in case of almost every early Sanskrit author, a fixed date can be assigned to him.]

Kadambari[endnoteRef:12], like Harsacarita, is an incomplete text. But whereas the incompletion of Harsacarita was a conscious decision on Banas part, in case of Kadambari it was death that intervened. The text was finished by his son Bhusanabhatta as a part of filial duty. Our discussion, however, is limited to the Purvabhaga of the story of Kadambari which was written by Bana himself. [12: References are made from the Kadambari text in the Sanskrita Sahityasambhar series. The English translations, however, are taken from C. M. Riddings The Kadambari of Bana.]

Kadambari has a complex narrative pattern, having not a single but multiple narrators each telling his/her own story, thereby creating a tale-within-tale structure. Below is given the sequence in which the narrators appear in the story:The third person narrator Vaisampayana telling his story to King Sudraka Sage Jabali telling the story of Vaisampayanas earlier birth to his disciples Mahasweta telling her story to Candrapida[endnoteRef:13] [13: In Bhusanabhattas scheme of things the story comes to a full circle by going back to where Sudraka is the listener and Vaisampayana the narrator. However, one does not know whether Bana himself had thought of such an ending for the story or not. Here, we need not concern ourselves with this debatable issue simply because we are dealing exclusively with the Purvabhaga. Works Cited:Chanda, Ipshita. Tracing the Charit as a Genre: An Exploration in Comparative Literary Methodology. Kolkata: Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, 2003.Das, Sisir Kumar. A history of Indian Literature 1800-1910 Western Impact: Indian Response. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. 1991.Dev, Amiya. Comparative Literature from below. Jadavpur Journal of Comparative Literature 29. 1990-91: 91-96Kane, P. V. Kadambari: Uttarbhaga. Bombay: Published by the Author. 1913.Ridding, C. M. tr. The Kadambari of Bana. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1974.Sen, Dr. Murarimohan et al. Sankrita Sahityasambhar 8: Banabhatta. 2nd ed. Kolkata: Nabapatra Prakashan, 2011.Srimadvalmikiya Ramayan. Gorakhpur: Gita Press. Thakur, Rabindranath. Kadabarichitra. Rabindra Rachanabali Vol III. Kolkata: Juthika Book Stall. 2003.Thapar, Romila. Cultural Pasts. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 2000Warder, A. K. Indian Kavya Literature Vol II. 2nd ed. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas Publishers Pvt. Ltd. 1990.]

The story, however, is simple enough. It begins with the arrival of a candala girl with a cage in her hand at the court of Sudraka, king of Vidisa. The desire of the girl is to gift the bird named Vaisampayana, well-versed in Veda, sastra and kavya, to the king. The king, already enwrapped in amusement by the beauty and confidence of the candala girl, accepts her gift. On the kings request the bird starts telling his own story. Then, in the following order comes the story of the sage Jabali, his narration of the previous birth of Vaisampayana, the story of Candrapida and Vaisampayana, Candrapidas meeting with Mahasweta, Mahaswetas narrating to him the love between her and Pundarika, Candrapidas meeting with Kadambari in Hemakuta and their falling in love with each other, Kadambaris request to leave Patralekha with her, Candrapidas return, Patralekhas arrival with the news of Kadambaris love-sickness etc. Banas narrative ends abruptly with the arrival of Patralekha in Ujjayan and her description of Kadambaris sickness to Candrapida; the rest of the story was written by Banas son. It has been suggested time and again (See Kane XXVI-XXVII and also Sen 9-10) that Bana derived the dry bones of his story from Gunadhyas now lost collection of tales Brhatkatha, written in Paisaci. This suggestion is made on the basis of the presence of a similar story (the story of king Sumana) in Ksemendras Brhatkathamanjari (11th CE) and Somadevas Kathasaritasagara (11th CE). The immediate source for both Ksemendra and Somadeva was, however, not Gunadhyas Brhatkatha but a Kashmiri recension of Gunadhyas narrative. It is more or less accepted that Bana lived sometimes during the first half of the seventh century AD. Therefore, neither Somadeva nor Ksemendra could have been the source of his story, and claiming Gunadhyas narrative as his possible source would be purely conjectural given the absence of any actual textual data. Be that as it may, the sustained popularity of the text is in itself a testimony of its literary merit. But is that simply because of the story which, however, remained incomplete? It does not take long, once one has entered Banas literary universe, to realize that the flow of the story is the least of Banas concerns. I am tempted to quote here the passage, though in translation, with which the Kathamukh of the text begins: There was once upon a time a king named Sudraka. Like a second Indra, he had his commands honored by the bent heads of all kings; he was lord of the earth girt in by the four oceans; he had an army of neighbouring chiefs bowed down in loyalty to his majesty; he had the signs of a universal emperor; like Visnu, his lotus-hand bore the sign of the conch and the quoit; like Siva, he had the circle of great kings humbled; like the ocean he was the source of Lakshmi; like the stream of Ganges, he followed in the course of the pious king Bhagiratha; like the sun, he rose daily in fresh splendor (Ridding 3-4)The rhythm of the original is absent in the translation. But even here one cannot but notice the abundant use of similes (upama, utpreksa). Similar passages could be quoted from the text to show Banas zeal at describing any object, human and animal by almost every possible analogy. This has led many modern critics and literary historians comment that Bana had very little sense of proportion. But, to recall Rabindranath again, could the exaggerations, which Bana is accused of making, survive if the audience/reader did not have the patience to endure them? Steeped too much in the European notion of subtlety our modern taste often makes us forget that the craft of storytelling has a unique spatial character, and Banas use of elaborate descriptions, long samasbaddha expressions was a part of the horizon of expectation of the readers for whom his narrative was intended. Bana was a court-poet who wrote in Sanskrit. His intended audience too, therefore, could not but be people belonging to the higher social stratum. Apparently it seems that Bana had an inexhaustible repository of similes, metaphors and other such devices using which he could extend his description of even a single object to pages. But if one investigates the situation of the literary system during Banas time it becomes clear that, in certain cases at least, Bana was simply adhering to the literary conventions popularized by previous authors and standardized by an already developed system of poetics. Banas selection of the genre is one such instance. Though he says in the Mangalacarana that the generic structure itself regulates the way of narration to a definitive extent. From Banas own declamation in the Mangalacarana it becomes apparent that he wanted Kadambari to be a Katha, one of the two major narrative types available in Banas time, the other being akhyanika. Two earliest writers who had tried to demarcate between these two narrative types were Bhamaha and Dandin. Their dates are disputable but what is easily noticed is their oppositional attitude with regards to the classification of narrative types. According to Bhamaha, in an akhyanika the hero tells his own story while in a katha the story is told either by the hero or somebody else. An akhyanika is divided into uchchvasas and vaktra and aparavaktra meters are used in it, whereas in a katha there are no such section divisions and it is bereft of chanda. In a katha themes like kanyaharana, samgram, vipralambha, daya are used; in an akhyanika they are not (Kane XXV-XXVIII. See also, Chanda 16-18). Dandin, too, speaks of these divisions and then demolishes them effectively saying that previous authors have not always maintained such hard-and-fast rules and hence katha and akhyanika are merely different names for the same kind of composition. Amarsinha, however, tried to distinguish katha from akhyanika on the basis of the formers being constituted of prabandhakalpana or imagined subject-matter and the latters of upalabdhartha or received material. This has been a more or less accepted notion. But one must also submit that, to quote Ipshita Chanda, there is by no means any consensus among classical critics with respect to generic nomenclature, though some characteristics seem to be more decisive than others for the purpose of making distinctions (17). This confusion or, let us say flexibility is to be evidenced in Kadambari also. Adhering to Bhamahas definition of Katha it employs a third-person narrator at the outset, but within that frame of third-person narration one finds several other speakers telling either their own (e.g Vaisampayana) or somebody elses (e.g. Jabali) story. The peculiarity of Banas narrative is that though it contains tales told by different speakers the idiom each of them uses to describe people or things is typically banabhattiya.Nevertheless, devices which together provided a shape or to be more technical, imposed an order on Banas narrative were in use for a long time in the existing literary situation not only in the strictly literary texts but also as accepted conventions of textualization in the Natyasastras and the Kamasastras. Bana makes extensive use of them but what makes his narration sound distinctively, what we have called, banabhattiya is his implementation of some of these conventions in the most unconventional manner. I shall cite examples of both kinds, that is to say of both conventional and unconventional handling of the conventions. When the candala girl enters the court of king Sudraka, the king is amazed by her beauty and also by the confidence with which she carried herself. There is a description by the third-person narrator here where appreciation is made of the girls beauty by means of describing her from head to toe. This corresponds with what the Natyasastra calls nakhsikh-varnanam of the nayika. This is done by describing the nayika from head to toe by suitable upama, rupaka or utpreksa. Therefore, what Bana does here is to cling to the conventions in the most conventional manner.An unconventional handling of the conventions is to be found in the Mahasweta-Pundarika episode. Both the Natyasatra and the Kamasatras list ten ways in which the nayaka or nayika should act when in love. These are:1. Love of the eye2. Attachment of the mind 3. Constant reflection4. Destruction of sleep5. Emancipation of the body6. Turning away from objects of enjoyment7. Removal of shame8. Madness9. Fainting10. Death One realizes that these are arranged in terms of the degree of emotional engagement of the character with the one whom he/she has fallen in love with. Seldom has any writer taken resort to the last stage of this list, namely dying. Bana does precisely that with the character of Pundarika who dies in a new moon night waiting for Mahasweta to come. The rasa thus evoked is, however, not karuna but vipralambha-sringara, which is caused by pravasa. Natyasastra distinguishes these two saying that the tone of the former is overly pessimistic while there are some germs of optimism in the latter (NS 6.44). This optimism in case of Mahasweta is guaranteed by the voice of a celestial figure that consoles her by giving assurance that Pundarika and she will meet again in the next birth. Bana did not live long enough to write a happy ending to this story. But this complex organizing of the episode well reveals his intentions.All these, however, is only to reach the ultimate goal of any Kavya composition, namely rasanispatti in the mind of the reader. This alone differentiates the Kavya from any other mode of composition. All the alamkaras and ritis, all types of rupakas and vakroktis are solely in the service of this. Again, then, we see that it is not the story that occupies the centre. Rather, it is the various ways in which that story can be narrated having a single end in mind that gives the Kavya narrative its peculiar character. 4.Is there then, to slightly alter A. K. Ramanujans famous question, an Indian way of narrativizing? In what has gone before we have not made a conscious attempt to answer this question which certainly would have led ourselves to value-judgment. Rather our intention has been to chart the development of the narrative mode via Valmiki and Bana in the Kavya models of composition by using the value-free (and I say this deliberately) tools of comparative literary methodology. But if in the process any affirmative answer has emerged that alone would be the gain of this task.