Budhasvamin

For information about The Emperor of the Sorcerers as a whole, see the review of volume one. In the second (and, alas, final) volume of this incomplete masterpiece, the poet writes with greater assurance and skill than in the earlier portions (which themselves were far from amateurish). Three of the embedded tales are especially worthy of note: the adventures of the merchant Sanudasa, who seeks to atone for his fall from ascetic principles, and two rival stories arguing respectively for the primacy of destiny and of human effort. Prince Naraváhanadatta gains two new wives, somewhat to the annoyance of an earlier, supernatural bride. The poem breaks off as he is wooing wife number six. Whether it was left unfinished or has been truncated by time, no one knows.… (mehr)

The Clay Sanskrit Library is a worthy project aimed at publishing contemporary English translations of the monuments of Sanskrit literature. One hundred volumes were originally slated, though financial woes will, at latest report, limit the series to about half that number. Many - the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, Shakuntala - are widely known (or at least known about) among Western readers. The Emperor of the Sorcerers is not. In fact, it is obscure even in India. Sometime in the Middle Ages, it was lost to view, not to be seen again until a French scholar recovered it from a Nepalese monastery early in the last century.

Like the more famous Ocean of the Rivers of Story, The Emperor of the Sorcerers purports to abridge a lost poem, called simply The Long Story, which is supposed to have comprised 100,000 verses composed in a language referred to as the "goblins' tongue". It recounts, with numerous detours, the romantic entanglements and other adventures of Prince Naraváhanadatta, a human being who rises to rulership over the realm of the sorcerers, acquiring 26 wives along the way. He enters as the savior of a kidnapped king and queen, to whom he then tells his life story in the first person. Unfortunately, the poem breaks off while he is wooing his sixth bride. What survives is substantial - over 4,500 verses (and Sanskrit verses are not short) filling two volumes in the CSL series.

Any reader familiar with the 1001 Nights will feel at home here: stories embedded within stories, the intermingling of the supernatural and the mundane, vast geographical scope, characters ranging from kings to beggars, a profusion of enchantments, love affairs, disguises, coincidences and reversals of fortune. In some respects, the present work is superior to the famous Arabian anthology. The frame story has considerable vitality on its own and doesn't sink beneath the weight of digressions. The psychology of the characters, while not what one would call realistic, is vivid and at least moderately believable. The hero's wives and counselors are more than beautiful or clever silhouettes. They manipulate the future emperor, intrigue against each other and display distinct personalities. The poet is slyly humorous in places, particularly at the expense of overzealous ascetics and purveyors of tritely wise platitudes. The poem's chief fault is that it sometimes relates incidents cursorily, suggesting that it may really be an abridgment of a more leisurely tale.

Like the Loeb Classical Library, CSL volumes contain the original text and an English translation on facing pages. The Sanskrit is transliterated in Roman letters, with heavy use of diacritical marks to enable the serious student to reconstruct the Devanagari script. The translation is rendered in serviceable prose, occasionally marred by clichés that probably don't occur in the Sanskrit. End notes explain many though by no means all, of the literary, historical and geographical references. More would be welcome.… (mehr)