Abstract
The Sanskrit word campū is usually understood to refer to a literary composition that combines prose and verse. I argue that this sense of the word was not available before the tenth century CE, and the vast majority of compositions that have been called campūs, either in premodern commentaries or in modern scholarship, were not and could not have been so called by their authors. This is true of almost the entirety of so-called “campū literature” in Kannada. The reference to campū as “a particular type of composition consisting of prose and verse” in Daṇḍin’s Mirror of Literature (ca. 700 CE) was probably not a definition, despite the fact that it has almost-universally been taken as such by the tradition of Indian poetics and modern scholarship. I propose that the campū might have originated as a subliterary comic performance, and that Daṇḍin (unknowingly) and Trivikramabhaṭṭa (knowingly) helped to establish the now- familiar sense of the word.
1 Rewriting the History of the campū
In principle, the campū poses a number of fascinating literary-historical problems: its sudden appearance in literary theory around the year 700 CE, and its appearance in actual literature only two centuries after that; its underdefinition, or perhaps even lack of definition, as a genre; the varieties of verse and prose it includes and their respective roles; its spread across several linguistic traditions, including at least Sanskrit, Kannada, Telugu, and Malayalam (or rather, the fact that modern scholars have recognized works in all these languages as campū); its links to various other literary genres; the suggestion, embedded into its form and occasionally mentioned by the texts themselves, of recitation before an audience.
These questions have hardly been formulated, much less addressed, in scholarship on the campū so far, which has been of a bibliographic rather than historical character. Apart from short notices in literary histories of the early twentieth century, modern scholarship on the campū generally starts from Nanda Kishore Sharma’s brief survey of the genre in the introduction to his edition of the Ānandakandacampū (1931), in which he listed 73 campū works, provided a speculative derivation of the word campū from a root cap meaning “to go,” quoted definitions of the form from Daṇḍin, Hēmacandra, and the Agnipurāṇa, and noted that Trivikramabhaṭṭa’s Damayantīkathā or Nalacampū, composed around 915 CE, is the earliest surviving representative of the genre. These observations have been expanded in subsequent scholarship, most extensively in C. D. Deshpande’s 1992 monograph, and in a few other contributions that have traced the formal characteristics of campūs.1 The historical narrative presented in this scholarship is that the campū genre developed organically from the literary refinement of Sanskrit prose. Implicitly or explicitly, scholars maintain that campū had developed by Daṇḍin’s time, but all of the early examples, prior to Trivikramabhaṭṭa’s Damayantīkathā, are lost.2 One challenge to this narrative is R. S. Mugali’s idea that campū literature originated in Kannada and spread to Sanskrit, but Deshpande rightly rejected his arguments.3
This paper presents an alternative history of the genre called campū in Sanskrit. I argue that campū was a subliterary performance genre centered around a raconteur who told humorous stories. Daṇḍin referred to it in his Mirror of Literature (Kāvyādarśa, ca. 700 CE), but probably it was already unknown to most of his contemporaries. The word was taken up again by Trivikramabhaṭṭa, but this time to refer to a literary composition in Sanskrit prose and verse, almost certainly based on a misunderstanding (or reinterpretation) of Daṇḍin. Trivikrama started a new “wave” of campū compositions that spread radially from his homeland of Karnataka. Around the same place and time, a similar genre spread in Kannada and then in Telugu, employing a mixture of prose and verse, and although these works seem to have ridden the “wave” started by Trivikrama, they are nevertheless not identified as campū and probably harken back to earlier prosimetric forms. The development of prosimetric forms in all their historical variety is obscured by the use of the word campū in reference to works whose authors did not call them by that name.
2 Daṇḍin Mentions but Does Not Define the campū
The earliest use of the word campū to refer to a literary genre, at least in the texts that survive, appears to occur in verse 31 of the first chapter of Daṇḍin’s Mirror of Literature. There he says, in the context of genres which consist of a “mixture” of prose and verse (miśra), that “there is a particular type of composition, consisting of prose and verse, that is called campū.”4 Daṇḍin composed his Mirror around 700 CE, probably in Kāñcīpuram, where he was associated with the court of the Pallava king Narasiṃhavarman II (r. ca. 690–725). Campū as a genre is not mentioned by earlier authors, including Daṇḍin’s predecessor in the realm of poetics, Bhāmaha.
Almost everyone has taken Daṇḍin’s verse to define the campū.5 But this is wrong for two reasons. First, the “mixed” composition is already defined by having a mixture of prose and verse. If the campū were to be defined by this mixture, then everything exhibiting both prose and verse would be a campū. This is obviously not the case, since Daṇḍin mentions stage plays as the first example of “mixed” compositions (miśrāṇi nāṭakādīni, 1.31a). Second, in the case of the stage play, Daṇḍin does not offer a definition, but rather notes that “it is dealt with at length elsewhere” (tēṣām anyatra vistaraḥ, 1.31b). Daṇḍin seems to refer to campū as a specific (kāpi) example of a mixed prose-verse composition, but he is silent on its defining features.6 The commentators universally take campū, however, as defined merely by the mixture of prose and verse.7 The same is true for nearly every definition of the campū in the tradition of poetics following Daṇḍin. They all contain the qualifier “consisting of prose and verse” (gadyapadyamaya), always borrowed directly or indirectly from Daṇḍin.8
Daṇḍin is also silent about the language of the campū. He does not mention it when discussing the languages of different genres. One anonymous Sanskrit commentary says that campū is mentioned to give an example of the mixed composition in Sanskrit alone.9
Finally, Daṇḍin does not give any examples of campū. And most commentators do not, either. The one exception is Ratnaśrījñāna (early tenth century) who says that it includes the Jātakamālā (or Jātakamālās) and Damayantī.10 The exact same comment is found in the Sinhala gloss (sannaya) on the Mirror, which is no surprise. As Dimitrov has shown, the Sinhala gloss very often reproduces Ratnaśrījñāna’s remarks.11
3 Most Works that We Identify as campū Do Not Identify Themselves as campū
Ratnaśrī’s examples bring us to the question: which works are campū? We should probably start by asking: which works call themselves campū? The answer is none, until at least two centuries after Daṇḍin’s Mirror.
I emphasize this point because it is now fairly common to use the word campū to refer to any composition (a) of mixed prose and verse (b) of a sufficiently high literary quality.12 The first criterion is formal, and on its own, it would result in a massive overextension of the term campū, from boundary inscriptions to the Upaniṣads and beyond.13 The second criterion is somewhat subjective. The idea is that for something to be considered a campū, it must in the first place be considered a kāvya. But scholarly judgments have differed on this point. Winternitz thought that the Jātakamālā of Āryaśūra, as well as Hariṣēṇa’s inscriptional panegyric to Samudragupta, could be considered campū; Lienhard advocated a more restrictive use of the term, ostensibly because of his insistence that a campū had to follow all of the conventions of kāvya literature.14 Both were no doubt aware that the earliest texts to describe themselves as campū date from the tenth century, which made them somewhat reticent to apply the term to earlier texts; hence Lienhard calls the Damayantīkathā “the earliest real campūkāvya.”15 The added qualification “real” suggests the introduction of another criterion: either (c) the author himself or (d) another premodern author designates the work in question as a campū.
Michael Hahn repeatedly cited Ratnaśrījñāna’s application of the term campū to Āryaśūra’s Jātakamālā as a reason for considering this work a genuine example of the genre. And not just Ratnaśrījñāna: the anonymous commentator on the Jātakamālā also calls it a campū, citing Daṇḍin’s definition (with, however, some interesting differences).16 This, together with Hahn’s appreciation of the literary quality of early Buddhist Sanskrit works, has led him to consider a wide variety of other works as campū: stories about the Buddha’s former lives, especially the Sanskrit collections by Saṅghasēna, Āryaśūra, Haribhaṭṭa, and Gōpadatta; or the diverse stories collected in Kumāralāta’s Kalpanāmaṇḍitikā Dṛṣṭāntapaṅkti; or finally the narrative portions of the vinaya of the Mūlasarvāstivādins. None of these works refer to themselves as campū.
Despite his insistence that Trivikrama wrote “the first real campūkāvya,” Siegfried Lienhard noted that some earlier Prakrit texts might fulfil criteria (a) and (b), and considered them “transitional” forms between prose and “real” campū. In this connection he mentioned the Kuvalayamālā of Uddyōtanasūri (779 CE).17 Chojnacki doubled down on this argument in the introduction to her translation of this work. She argued that the Kuvalayamālā is “the historically earliest example of the campū in Indian literature that has come down to us,” and distinguishes a campū from other possible mixtures of prose and verse on account of the fact that the verses “appear to be more closely tied and woven into the narrative plot.”18 Similar arguments could be made for Haribhadra’s Story of Samarāditya (Samarāiccakahā, somewhat earlier than the Kuvalayamālā) and Śīlāṅka’s Fifty-Four Great Men (Caüppaṇṇamahāpurisacariya, somewhat later than it), as well as Guṇacandra’s Mahāvīracariya (1082).19 In fact, however, none of these works identify themselves as campū. They use more generic terms, such as kathā “story” or carita “account.”
Some support for Chojnacki’s identification of the Kuvalayamālā as a campū is provided by Ratnaprabhasūri, who wrote a Kuvalayamālākathā in the later thirteenth century in which he claimed to “put into Sanskrit the campū that had earlier been composed by the sage Dākṣiṇyacihna (i.e., Uddyōtana).”20 The Kuvalayamālā therefore fulfills criterion (d) as well.
In addition to Sanskrit and Prakrit works, there is at least one notable Tamil work that modern scholarship has occasionally identified as a campū, namely the Pārataveṇpā of Peruntēvaṉār. This work was composed under the patronage of the Pallava king Nandivarman III (r. 846–869). It consists, according to Zvelebil’s notes, in verses in a high poetic register of Tamil, together with passages in “ornate and vigorous prose,” of which the language exhibits a considerably greater influence of Sanskrit.21 As far as I am aware, this work neither calls itself a campū (or campu) nor was recognized as such by any premodern author.
The earliest surviving literature in Kannada, with the exception of the Way of the Poet-King (discussed below) is made up of compositions in mixed prose and verse divided into chapters. Modern scholarship knows these compositions as campū — indeed the earliest period of Kannada literature is often called “the campū period” (campukāla) — and indeed some premodern authors use this term (see below).22 But the earliest authors — Pampa (941), Ponna (950), Nāgavarma I (990), Ranna (1008), and Nāgavarma II (1042) — never use it with reference to their own works. The tendency to call such works campū, while strictly speaking anachronistic, makes sense when we consider the strong resemblance between the Kannada prosimetric form (which was perhaps originally called gadyakathe, see below) and the Sanskrit campū.
I do not read Telugu or Kērala Maṇipravāḷam, but there are a number of works in both languages that modern scholarship has called campū. Indeed the campū is considered one of the characteristic genres of both Telugu and Maṇipravāḷam. I am, however, told by colleagues who work on these languages that the works in question do not describe themselves as campūs.23
4 Some of the Earliest References to campū are in Contexts Clearly Derived from Daṇḍin’s Discussion
We have a gap of nearly two hundred years between Daṇḍin’s use of the word campū and the next earliest uses of the word. Most of these uses are clearly derived from Daṇḍin’s discussion, and hence it appears that Daṇḍin was the vector by which the term campū entered into discussions of literary genre.
4.1 Not The Way of the Poet-King (870s, Karnataka)
On the topic of South Indian vernaculars, I noted above that modern scholars associate the campū with early Kannada and Telugu literature, despite the fact that not a single work of Kannada literature from this period calls itself a campū. In this context I put forward one important negative example, that is, a place where the word campū is not used despite our expectations.
The earliest Kannada work to survive in manuscript form, the Way of the Poet-King (Kavirājamārgaṃ), is, among other things, an extended response to Daṇḍin’s Mirror of Literature. The Way was completed in the final decade or so of the reign of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa king Amōghavarṣa (r. ca. 814–878). The author, Śrīvijaya, establishes a baseline of intertextuality with Daṇḍin’s Mirror in order to diverge from it at key points, a phenomenon that Sarah Pierce Taylor and I have called “extratextuality.”24 Śrīvijaya’s discussion of the “body of literature” (kāvyaśarīra) is one such point.
Daṇḍin had classified the “body of literature” into three types: prose, verse, and mixed. The Way simply removes the “mixed” category and speaks only of two major divisions (1.24), as Bhāmaha did (Ornament of Literature [Kāvyālaṅkāra] 1.16b). This is itself a significant intervention. A later adaptation of the Mirror into Kannada, the Ornament of Mādhava (Mādhavālaṅkāraṃ), does indeed define the campū, using the by-now obligatory phrase gadyapadyamaya.25 But there is more to Śrīvijaya’s intervention than simply deleting the reference to the “mixed” category. After introducing prose, and referring to such outstanding Sanskrit examples as the Deeds of Harṣa and Kādambarī, the Way adds something (1.27, from the edition and translation I am preparing with Sarah Pierce Taylor):
The next verse appears to list authors who had composed such works in Kannada, although their works are all lost, and in fact all of them except Durvinīta (the Western Gaṅga king who ruled in the later sixth century) are known only from this one reference.26
And that’s it. As Mariyappa Bhaṭṭa has noted, the word campū does not appear in the Way of the Poet-King at all.27 This is somewhat unexpected, since the campū is supposed to have been the dominant literary genre in Kannada from its beginnings up to about the twelfth century.
Is gadyakathe just another name for the campū? T. V. Veṅkaṭācalaśāstrī argued that Śrīvijaya avoided using the word campū to refer the style that he calls gadyakathe, suggesting that the latter was really a prose work that happened to be interspersed with verses.28 I more or less agree: Śrīvijaya did not use the word campū because he did not understand any of the relevant Kannada works to be described by that word. Śrīvijaya was adapting Daṇḍin’s Mirror to Kannada literature. Śrīvijaya certainly knew what a nāṭaka was, and he nevertheless left it out, because there were no Kannada nāṭakas. I personally doubt that Śrīvijaya understood campū to be simply a mixture of prose and verse, as all later commentators have understood it to be, because if he did, then he could have used it to describe what he calls the gadyakathe. In fact, Śrīvijaya might not have known what a campū was at all. This interpretation would open up the possibility that the prosimetric form used by Pampa and later authors — universally called campū by modern scholars, but rarely and only later by the poets themselves — is actually a continuation of what Śrīvijaya called a gadyakathe. Authors after Śrīvijaya, however, do not use this term.
4.2 Ornament of Our Own Language (Early Tenth c., Sri Lanka)
Let me begin with The Ornament of Our Own Language (Siya bas lakara). This is a work of poetics in Sinhala that is heavily indebted to Daṇḍin’s Mirror of Literature. After rehearsing Daṇḍin’s threefold distinction between the “body of literature” (kāvyaśarīra), viz. prose, verse, and mixed, the author says (and here I give Charles Hallisey’s translation):29
The date of the Siya bas lakara remains unsettled. It is attributed to a king identified only by the generic epithet Salamevan (Śilāmēghavarṇa). Most recently Dimitrov has convincingly suggested that he is to be identified with king Kassapa V (913–923), and that the author of the prose commentary (sannaya) on the Siya bas lakara, known by the Sinhalese name Ruvanmi, is actually the great tenth-century scholar Ratnamati, also known as Ratnaśrījñāna. Dimitrov considers it likely that the commentary was completed soon after the text, in the 920s.30
The main point to be made here is that one of the earliest uses of the word campū — here in its Sinhala form sapu — occurs in a context that is heavily indebted to Daṇḍin. The Ornament of Our Own Language is itself a transcreation of Daṇḍin’s work. There are some reasons to think that Ruvanmi, who was likely Daṇḍin’s earliest and most important Sanskrit commentator Ratnaśrījñāna, did not just compose a gloss on the Ornament, but provided critical scholarly assistance to Salamevan in composing it.31
One important difference between the Ornament and Daṇḍin’s Mirror may be noted here. In the Mirror, the campū is merely mentioned as an example, just like the ōsara — and who even remembers the ōsara, or knows what it is?32 By contrast, the Ornament’s mention of the campū occurs in the context of an aspiration for vernacular literary creation. For Salameva and Ruvanmi, the campū was not like the ōsara at all. It did not name an obscure literary genre, but a genre that had very recently been revived, or as I will argue, reinvented.
4.3 Abhinavagupta’s Eye (but Not Ānandavardhana’s Light on Resonance)
At verse 3.7 of his Light on Resonance (Dhvanyālōka) and the following prose vṛtti, Ānandavardhana refers to “divisions” (bhēda) of literature. The divisions with which he was primarily concerned with were single-verse poems (muktaka) and longer compositions (prabandha). He does not mention the campū at all.
This is exactly what we would expect. It is well known that Ānandavardhana, writing about a century and a half after Daṇḍin, either did not know the Mirror, or, if he did, he gave it “the cold shoulder.”33 Since Daṇḍin was the first, and for a long time the only, author in the field of poetics to mention the campū, it should come as no surprise that poeticians who ignored him also ignored the campū.
The only reference to Daṇḍin’s Mirror in Abhinavagupta’s Eye (Lōcana), composed in the late tenth century, appears in the commentary to this passage. Ānandavardhana had given an open-ended list of longer compositions that ends with “and so on,” and Abhinavagupta, as a good commentator should do, explains what is left out of the list. “The campū is included because the phrase ‘and so on’ is used, as Daṇḍin says: ‘a campū contains both verse and prose.’”34 Abhinavagupta had to quote Daṇḍin to make this point, because none of the poeticians whom he obviously preferred—Bhāmaha, Udbhaṭa, Vāmana, and Rudraṭa—say anything whatsoever about the campū.
4.4 The Analysis of Literature (Early Eleventh c., Karnataka)
The earliest Kannada author to use the word campū, to my knowledge, is Nāgavarma II, the author of another work of poetics, called Analysis of Literature (Kāvyāvalōkanaṃ). He must have completed this work after finishing his Vardhamānapurāṇaṃ in 1042. Consciously or unconsciously, he undoes Śrīvijaya’s interventions, and reverts back to Daṇḍin’s schema wherein the “body of literature” can be classified in three ways, namely as prose, verse, or a mixture of both.35 He gives examples of the principal genre in each category, and for the “mixed” category he gives the campū, defining it only as “a mixture of both prose and verse.”36 His discussion appears to be derivative of Daṇḍin’s (whose influence he explicitly acknowledges), except that he mentions the campū and not the nāṭaka.37 Nāgavarma does not exclusively follow Daṇḍin in his accounting of Kannada genres, however. In fact he adds quite a few that Daṇḍin does not mention at all, but none of them appear to be mixed prose-verse forms. I take Nāgavarma’s inclusion of the campū and not the nāṭaka to mean that he believed that Kannada literature included examples of the campū but not the nāṭaka. If I am right about this, then Nāgavarma quite possibly considered the mixed prose-verse genre favored by poets such as Pampa and Ranna to be called campū—something he was in a position to do, as I argue below, only because Trivikrama had reinvented the campū in the meantime. Nāgavarma himself, however, does not appear to use the word at all in his own contribution to the genre, the Vardhamānapurāṇaṃ.
After Nāgavarma, campū is defined in a few other Kannada works of poetics, such as the Ornament of Udayāditya and the aforementioned Ornament of Mādhava.38
4.5 The Illumination of the Erotic (Early Eleventh c., Malwa)
Bhōja is, after Daṇḍin, one of the earliest authors to mention the campū. Bhōja restates Daṇḍin’s threefold classification (prose, verse and mixed) in both of his poetic works (Necklace of Sarasvatī [Sarasvatīkaṇṭhābharaṇa] 2.18 and Illumination of the Erotic [Śṛṅgāraprakāśa] ch. 3, p. 187). But it is only in the Illumination of the Erotic that Bhōja gives examples, among which the campū figures. His characteristically multitiered classification involves compositions in which either prose or verse predominates, and those in which they are equal; in each kind, the elements of prose and verse can be similar (sajātīya) or dissimilar (vijātīya). The campū is listed, along with the samīkṣā and the saṭṭaka, as a composition with relatively equal parts prose and verse, wherein the two elements are similar (p. 190).
Bhōja mentions the campū again as one of the genres that is “to be heard” (śravya) rather than “to be seen” (prēkṣya).39 In that context he says (p. 674):
Note that the “basis” for the definition of the campū is the ākhyāyikā, for which Bhōja gives Bāṇa’s Deeds of Harṣa as an example (p. 672). The ākhyāyikā also is divided into ucchvāsas, and critically, Bhōja says that it should be in Sanskrit prose (saṃskṛtēna gadyēna, p. 672). The differences appear to be (1) the inclusion of verse; and (2) the inclusion of aṅkas. The latter criterion is a bit mysterious to me, because I only know aṅka in the sense of an “act” of a play. But clearly Bhōja has Sanskrit examples in mind, given the basis of the campū in the ākhyāyikā, and given the examples he names. Damayantī is obviously Trivikrama’s work, which I argue below was responsible for reintroducing the term campū after two centuries. Damayantī is divided into ucchvāsas, and indeed this might have been the reason for Bhōja to incorporate this feature into his definition of the genre. But Vāsavadattā is unexpected, if it refers to Subandhu’s work by that name, since it is mostly in prose, and of course does not call itself a campū.
The apparent exclusion of vernacular works from the category of campū might come as a surprise. I consider it unlikely that Bhōja was ignorant of the effusion of prosimetric literature in Kannada in the century or so preceding him. In fact Nāgavarma I claims to have recited his Kannada Kādambari before Bhōja himself. This probably means that, for Bhōja at least, the campū was not a vernacular genre, and was represented above all by Trivikrama’s work.
One small point: the Campūrāmāyaṇa is ascribed, in its colophons, to a certain Bhōja who was a “Vidarbharāja,” and this author has sometimes been identified with the Paramāra king. I consider this attribution to be false, and probably the Campūrāmāyaṇa is later than Bhōja; he certainly does not appear to know it.40
5 Trivikrama (Re)invents the campū
The above survey has run from the very first usage of the word campū to refer to a literary genre, in Daṇḍin’s Mirror of Literature, to a number of other occurrences in the following centuries, where authors clearly seemed to be relying on Daṇḍin to tell them what a campū was and where it fits in the larger picture of literary genres. One striking fact emerges from the above survey: despite several engagements with Daṇḍin’s work in the time period in question, and despite considerable activity in the field of poetics in Kashmir, nobody ever mentions the campū in the two-hundred-odd years between Daṇḍin’s Mirror (ca. 700) and Trivikrama’s Damayantī (ca. 915). Śrīvijaya doesn’t, nor do Udbhaṭa, Vāmana, Rudraṭa, or Ānandavardhana. Once we get to Trivikrama, however, the situation changes radically. Not only do people start mentioning the campū in their own works (in Sanskrit, Sinhala, and Kannada), but when they have to give an example of the genre, they invariably mention Trivikrama’s Damayantī. These facts alone should suggest, as a hypothesis, that early authors read Daṇḍin’s mention of the campū as a reference to a strange and unfamiliar literary genre, but when Trivikrama claimed it as the name of the combination of prose and verse on display in his Damayantī, he provided Daṇḍin’s lakṣaṇa with a lakṣya, thereby allowing it to finally serve its purpose of modeling a literary phenomenon. Subsequently, poets, literary theorists, and commentators felt that they had finally understood what Daṇḍin meant by the word campū.
Trivikramabhaṭṭa was a court poet of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa king Indra III (r. 915–927), and composed the latter’s Nausari copper plates. His Damayantī, also known as the Nalacampū, is the first text to explicitly identify itself as a campū in Indian literary history. The following verse of his is well-known (1.25):
I think Trivikramabhaṭṭa composed Damayantī prior to obtaining a position in the court of Indra III, so it was likely finished by 915 CE.42 In any case, it must have been extremely popular for the Sinhalese monk Ratnaśrījñāna to know of it within more or less a decade of its composition. He referred to it in his commentary on the Mirror of Daṇḍin, and I strongly suspect that the reference to campū in the Ornament of Our Own Language is due in part to Ratnaśrī’s acquaintance with Trivikrama’s work. As noted above, the Nalacampū was the example of the campū for Bhōja as well.
Scholars have long considered Karnataka to be the “heartland” of the campū, partly based on the assumption that this was the name of the genre in which Pampa, Ponna, and Ranna wrote their famous Kannada works.43 As I noted above, that assumption needs to be revised, given that there is no evidence that these poets, or indeed any Kannada author before the mid-eleventh century, understood their works to be campūs. Nevertheless it is a fact that the earliest literary work to call itself a campū, and to clearly characterize the campū as a mixture of prose and verse, was composed in the Rāṣṭrakūṭa kingdom, with its capital at Mānyakhēṭa in northern Karnataka.
5.1 Trivikrama’s Followers in Sanskrit
The next earliest campū is Sōmadēva’s Yaśastilakacampū, composed in 959 CE at the court of Baddega, the king of the Cāḷukyas of Vemulavāḍa.44 He doesn’t actually describe the work as a campū, except in the title, and for him the choice of prose and verse appears to be less motivated by a desire to follow a certain generic template than it was to include “the best of both worlds.” He almost appears defensive about the choice in the following verse (1.24):
Handiqui points out that Sōmadēva’s primary influence is Bāṇa, although he considers it likely that Sōmadēva knew the works of Pampa, which were composed at the very same court less than twenty years previously; there are some verbal echoes of Trivikrama, but Handiqui is silent on whether Sōmadēva knew him.45
After the tenth century, campū in Sanskrit begins to move beyond Karnataka proper. Sōḍḍhala composed his Udayasundarīkathā in Thane, near today’s Mumbai, at the court of one Mummuṇirāja in the early eleventh century; Warder suggests that it was revised after the death of Bhōja, who is mentioned in the work.46 Sōḍḍhala’s composition of the work is part of the story itself, and he says there (p. 13):
prakramē tu ramaṇīyaṃ na nāma kēvalaṃ gadyaṃ nāpi kēvalaṃ padyam ubhayānubandhinī campūr ēva śrēyasī, yasmād anyaiva ratnair vipañcitasya śōbhā kanakabhūṣaṇasya, anyad ēva pāṭalāmiśritasya saurabhaṃ vicakilaguluñchasya, anya ēva vaṃśadhvanigarbhitasya manōhārimā gītasya, anyad ēva karpūramilitasya śaityaṃ malayajadravasya, anyaiva ca hṛdyatā padyānuṣaṅginō gadyasyēti cētasi vicintya campūm ēva kathāṃ karttum upajanitaniścayas taddinam ativāhayāñ cakrē.
As with Trivikrama and Sōmadēva, Bāṇa is Sōḍḍhala’s primary stylistic influence. In fact Bāṇa plays a major role in the story. These campūs thus belong to the long tradition of Sanskrit art-prose, except that they make frequent use of Sanskrit verse as well, which Bāṇa (and for that matter Subandhu) did not do. It is as if the label campū gives these authors permission to “enliven” their stories with verse.
We might at this juncture mention a text which is more or less exactly contemporaneous with Sōḍḍhala’s Udayasundarī and which was composed at Bhōja’s court: Dhanapāla’s Tilakamañjarī. This work is best characterized as a prose novel in the style of Bāṇa’s Kādambarī, but he begins with some critical observations on the use of prose and verse (p. 2, vv. 15–18):
As Sharma has noted, this is a relatively clear rebuke of the prose style of some of the followers of Bāṇa: he mentions Vādībhasiṃha, author of the Gadyacintāmaṇi, but we can see it as a criticism of Trivikrama Bhaṭṭa as well.47 In fact Trivikrama, whom we could certainly expect Dhanapāla to have known, is pointedly left off the relatively long list of earlier authors whom Dhanapāla praises. These passages confirm that Dhanapāla knew the genre of campū as a mixture of prose and verse, about a century after Trivikrama reintroduced the term, and elected not to compose his story in that genre, but rather to follow in the footsteps of Bāṇa and write a story (mostly) in flowing prose.
There is a long tradition of writing in campū after the eleventh century, but I don’t think it adds much to our understanding of how the genre came into being and how the term campū came to be applied to it. I note, however, that is largely a South Indian genre. One apparent exception is the campū of the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas, but the foundational figures of that movement, the Gōsvāmins, belonged to a family of Kannadiga Brahmins.48 Still, by the sixteenth century, no special pleading is needed to account for the knowledge and cultivation of the campū throughout the subcontinent.
5.2 Trivikrama’s Followers in Kannada
Above, we saw that the earliest works of Kannada literature, which are almost universally called campū by modern scholars, were not so called by the authors themselves or by contemporary literary critics. How did this “mistake” come about? When did the term campū come to be applied to works in a mixture of prose and verse in Kannada?
I suggest that Trivikrama’s redefinition of the campū is the conditio sine qua non for this change. Once Trivikrama had placed a composition in mixed prose and verse before readers and called it a campū, it was in principle possible for any such composition to be recognized as a campū. And as I suggested above, it seems that Nāgavarma, writing in the middle of the eleventh century, did indeed recognize campū as a genre of Kannada literature, represented perhaps by the works of Pampa, Ponna, and Ranna.
In principle, yes, but in practice? We can point to two works composed in the early thirteenth century to see when and how the word campū actually came to be used to refer to works of literature in Kannada. Let’s first look at Janna’s Anantanāthapurāṇaṃ, composed around 1230.49 That work presents the story of the fourteenth tīrthaṅkara, Anantanātha, in mixed prose and verse. Like earlier examples of the genre, it does not call itself a campū, but unlike them, it does in fact use the word. The author provides an extremely brief synopsis of literary genres when mentioning the praises that a character recites (ōdi pogaḻva) at a Jain temple:50
The verse genres are quoted verbatim from Daṇḍin’s Mirror (1.13), except here they are imagined as constituents of the genre vaidaṇḍika (also known by its Kannada name bedaṇḍe), which is defined, here and elsewhere, by a diversity of metrical forms. The invocation of the vaidaṇḍika, which is a Kannada rather than Sanskrit genre, strongly suggests that Janna was thinking of Kannada rather than Sanskrit literature in this passage. The forms of prose named here are very interesting, because only three of them (utkalikā, cūrṇikā, and vṛttagandhikā) are represented in mainstream Sanskrit poetics, whereas here we have a broader spectrum that seems to align more closely with classifications found in other vernacular sources.51 Campū is here defined as a mixture of the two — that is, of prose and verse.
It is not altogether surprising to see campū being used in this way by this time. Janna’s contemporary, Cauṇḍarāja (also called Cauṇḍarasa), composed a work called the Naḷacampu. According to the editor, Trivikrama was one of Cauṇḍarāja’s models, as the title would lead us to expect.52 A cursory glance at the text reveals, however, that it is almost entirely in verse and is not divided into chapters or ucchvāsas. To me it seems to match the description of a campū least among the texts to which this designation has been attached, and I wonder whether it was original. In the text itself, the work is called naḷacaritram.53
After Janna, the earliest use of the word campū in Kannada literature — that is, not in a work of poetics — known to me is in the Critique of Religion (Dharmaparīkṣe) by Vṛttavilāsa, probably composed in the middle of the fourteenth century.54 Here is verse 1.37:
6 Preliminary Conclusions
Before jumping back in time, before Daṇḍin, we can put some of the pieces together.
There is a long history — really several long histories — of prosimetric genres in South Asian literature, both before and after the word campū appears in Daṇḍin’s Mirror in around 700.
Daṇḍin does not define the campū as a mixture of prose and verse, but only say that this is one of its characteristics.
No surviving works before Daṇḍin’s Mirror call themselves campū (including all of those that scholars have claimed to be campū or proto-campū etc.).
None of the so-called campū works of Kannada literature call themselves campū, either, and in fact one that does appear to call itself a campū (viz. Cauṇḍarasa’s Naḷacampu) does not actually fit the description.
After Daṇḍin, the word campū is used in works of poetics in contexts that are clearly dependent on Daṇḍin’s discussion (e.g., in Salameva’s, Bhōja’s, and Nāgavarma’s works).
After Daṇḍin, the word campū is first used in literature by Trivikrama around 915 to refer to his own prosimetric composition in Sanskrit, and in the following hundred years or so it is used exclusively to refer to compositions in Sanskrit in mixed prose and verse, almost certainly following Trivikrama’s model.
Bhōja and Ratnaśrījñāna read Daṇḍin with Trivikrama in mind, and understand the word campū in the Mirror of Literature to refer to the style in which Trivikrama composed his Damayantī.
Only afterwards, once the word campū is widely understood to mean a composition in prose and verse, is it applied to such compositions in vernacular languages (and in the case of Kannada and Telugu, however, this is centuries after the so-called campū-period).
If I am right, what has happened is that Daṇḍin casually mentioned an obscure prosimetric genre, but because of the enormous influence of his Mirror, this mention was read as a definition, and more than that, as an invitation to compose literature in a mixture of prose and verse. Although the prosimetric genre had developed on its own, in both Sanskrit and Kannada, the word campū was not applied to such compositions in Sanskrit until the tenth century, and was not applied to such compositions in Kannada until even later (perhaps by Nāgavarma in the eleventh, perhaps by Janna and Cauṇḍarasa in the thirteenth, and definitely by Vṛttavilāsa in the fourteenth). The new use of the term was inspired, directly or indirectly, by Trivikramabhaṭṭa.
7 Campū Does Not Have a Sanskrit Etymology
What could Daṇḍin possibly have had in mind? If there are no earlier attestations, we might draw some help from etymology. Nandikishore Sharma and C. R. Deshpande have provided fanciful derivations from a non-existent Sanskrit root *√cap. We don’t need to spend time on these suggestions.55 Similarly, we can probably ignore Bailey’s suggestion that it comes from a palatalized form of a root *√kamp, meaning “bend,” and hence means “the ‘twisted composition,’ showing the suffix -ū-.” The root is not attested in Sanskrit in this meaning, but is found in other Indo-European languages.56
The most important discussion is an article by Kuiper, who noted a number of striking parallels from Austroasiatic and Austronesian languages. What might appear to be the most promising piece of evidence is the word campur in Malaysian and other languages in the Malayic branch of the Austronesian language family (namely Sakei, Tembi, and Semang). This word means “mix.” Kuiper found it hard to believe that is is mere chance that Sanskrit campū meaning a “mixed” genre of prose and verse corresponds to closely in form and meaning to Malay campur “mix.” Kuiper went on to ask the obvious question: if campū is a borrowing, where was it borrowed from? And does this imply that the source language already had a well-developed literary tradition?57
The parallel is indeed striking, but there are a handful of problems with the suggestion that Sanskrit borrowed the word from an Austronesian source. The first is just its prima facie unlikelihood. I don’t know of any other Sanskrit words that have been borrowed from Austronesian. That doesn’t exclude the possibility of course, because there was intense communication by sea between India — especially South India, where Daṇḍin lived — and Austronesian-speaking areas in Southeast Asia.
But thing brings us to the second question: Kuiper’s examples were all modern. Did these language families have a word campur meaning “mixed” at the time in question, that is, before 700 CE? Javanese is the only Austronesian language I know of to have a premodern literature in which the word is actually used. The first definition that Zoetmulder gives in his Old Javanese—English Dictionary is “mixed,” but that is certainly because of the sense of the modern Indonesian word.58 In fact, as the attestations in his dictionary show, the basic meaning of the word in Javanese was “impure” or “inappropriate.” The word first appears in the Ādiparva, in the middle of the tenth century, incidentally right at the time that campū was becoming popular in Karnataka. In fact I would argue that none of the Javanese usages carries the sense of “mixed” at all.59
Finally, the Austronesian word campur begins with a c. Such words are reconstructed only for one branch of the Austronesian language family, namely Proto-Malayic. Adelaar notes that there are few words with c reconstructed for Proto-Malayic, and quite a few of these may turn out to be loanwords.60 We might therefore expect campur to have been borrowed into Proto-Malayic from a neighboring language, whatever it might have originally meant. The most likely source of such a borrowing would be a neighboring language in Mainland Southeast Asia, and hence probably a language belonging to the Austroasiatic family.
Perhaps for some of these reasons, Mayrhofer concluded that the etymology of Sanskrit campū was ultimately uncertain.61
8 campū “Joke”
But here is where things get interesting. The Austroasiatic languages connect India and Southeast Asia. And as Kuiper already noted, the Austroasiatic language Santali, spoken in northeastern India, has a word cạmpur, which Campbell defines as “made up, concocted; yarning, joking,” and Bodding as “jocular, jocose, facetious (bordering on indecency); joke, lark, make fun.”62 Kuiper did not make much of this word, since its meaning is rather different from what campū means in Sanskrit. But if I am right, campū only came to mean “a composition in mixed prose and verse” in the tenth century or so, due to a misunderstanding of Daṇḍin. We don’t actually know what it meant for Daṇḍin or for earlier authors.
Or do we? There is one earlier use of the word campū in Sanskrit. It occurs in Śrīghana’s Manual of Conduct (Śrīghanācārasaṅgraha), composed around the third century CE. Or more precisely, it occurs in Jayarakṣita’s commentary on the work, composed around 500 CE. Śrīghana’s Manual itself does not survive, since the copyist of the single surviving manuscript of Jayarakṣita’s commentary left spaces for the base text but did not ultimately add it. Jayarakṣita’s word-for-word commentarial style, however, allows the base text to be reconstructed in most places.63 At the beginning of the eleventh chapter it says:
Jayarakṣita glosses campū here with hāsya.64 This is an unexpected piece of evidence that fits in very well with the hypothesis that campū was borrowed into Sanskrit from an Austroasiatic language, where it meant something like “joke.” We have very little other evidence, but it is suggestive that cạmpur katha still means “a made-up story, a yarn, a tall tale” in Santali. I do not know where Śrīghana was from, but if he was from the northeast, and might have encountered Austroasiatic-speaking people (or might have been one himself) then this hypothesis would be corroborated slightly. It doesn’t require too much imagination, or too many steps, to think of a situation where a local word cạmpur was used for a particular type of literary composition, or more likely a type of literary performance, in which someone would tell an amusing story using a mixture of prose and verse. Many folk traditions have something similar.
I note that in the case of many other “minor” genres, Sanskrit has borrowed both the name and the thing from local languages. These minor genres are not very well known, because they were presumably located more on the “performance” side of the “performance/permanence” scale.65 In the case of the performing arts, these minor genres are generally classed as uparūpaka or “minor forms.” These are not discussed in the foundational Treatise on Theater (Nāṭyaśāstra), but are mentioned in subsequent works. Abhinavagupta (eleventh century) mentions about ten of these in his commentary to the Treatise, relying on earlier authorities.66 A few have names that strongly suggest a borrowing from a language other than Sanskrit.67 Here I will briefly review the scholarship on those minor forms.
The saṭṭaka is a romantic comedy in Prakrit, full of verses and musical interludes, of which several examples survive.68 It is mentioned in the Agnipurāṇa and was defined by Hēmacandra, who considered it a rūpaka based on the nāṭikā (and hence, unlike the other forms discussed here, not an uparūpaka).69 The name is now agreed to come from a word āṭṭa, derived from a Dravidian root √āṭu meaning “dance” (cf. Tamil āṭu and Kannada āḍu), with the Sanskrit prefix sa- and suffix -ka, hence meaning “[the form] with dancing.”70
The ḍōmbikā or ḍōmbalikā was known to Abhinavagupta, who quotes a definition according to which it was performed to please a king or prince, and deals with clandestine love.71 The connection with the caste-name ḍōmba (ḍōm, rōm) is obvious; Mayrhofer thinks that the caste-name itself is based on the sound of the drum with which members of this caste were associated; Kuiper has suggested that the name is from a “Proto-Muṇḍa” root ḍVb.72 H. C. Bhayani has brilliantly reconstructed the underlying language and meter of the very corrupt citations of two ḍōmbikās that are quoted in the Abhinavabhāratī and Hēmacandra’s Kāvyānuśāsana (titled Cūḍāmaṇi and Guṇamālā): three our of the four quotations are Apabhraṃśa rāsakas, and one is a Prakrit gāthā.73 Bhayani further established the the durmilikā found in Bhōja’s list of uparūpakas is a Sanskritization of *ḍōmbilikā.74
The ṣiḍgaka was known to Abhinavagupta. Bhōja calls it śrīgadita, which Raghavan and Bhayani identified as a Sanskritization; Hēmacandra reads the earlier sources as śiṅgaka in his Kāvyānuśāsana and śiṅgaṭaka in his Vivēka, but also adds śrīgadita- as a different type.75 Bhayani adduced the forms ṣiḍga, khiḍga, ṣiṭga, ṣiṅga, and khiṅga, which are defined by “commentators and lexicographers” as “a synonym of viṭa, pallavaka, kāmuka, vidagdha etc., and this meaning of ‘a voluptuary,’ ‘a gallant,’ ‘a person fond of women’ is supported by the actual usage in literature”; he further connects the word to hiṅga, defined as a “lover” (jāra) in Hēmacandra’s Prakrit lexicon.76 Bhayani notes that the word, of uncertain origin, may be behind the common Sanskrit word śṛṅgāra, which otherwise lacks a compelling etymology.77
The cillī or callī was known to Bhōja as a dance with two rows facing each other other to the accompaniment of a drum.78 If this is connected to the Sanskrit word cillī “cricket,” which has a bewildering variety of spellings (jhillī, cillikā, jhillikā, jhirikā, jhiñjhī etc.), then it is clearly borrowed from a language other than Sanskrit.79
The hallīsaka or hallīśaka, known to Abhinavagupta, was in fact already attested in literature as a kind of group dance, going back at least to the Kāmasūtra of Vātsyāyana.80 Its etymology is “unclear” according to Mayrhofer, and the root to which it has sometimes been linked, *√hall “move,” is probably itself borrowed into Sanskrit.81 Contrary to what lexicons say, the word hallīsaka/hallīśaka does not occur in Daṇḍin’s Mirror.82
Note that these are, for lack of a better term, uparūpakas of dṛśyakāvya, i.e., minor genres related to the theater. They can feature dialogue, but they also feature song and dance, and in fact their status as “minor” genres is correlated with the predominance of song and dance in them. We do not, to my knowledge, have a corresponding list of uparūpakas of śravyakāvya, i.e., minor genres that feature a single reciter, although such genres are known in abundance throughout South and Southeast Asia. I can think Cākyār Kūttu, the monologues performed by Cākyārs in Kerala, which are often a kind of “stand-up” routine, especially when the Cākyār is in the costume of the vidūṣaka.83 The Harikathā performance, widespread throughout Southern India, is another example of the type, and the admixture of songs and prose narration has prompted some scholars to compare it to the campū.84
9 The History of campū as a Genre-name Must Be Separated from the History of Prosimetric Forms
The long history of prosimetric forms in South Asia has not been told, and this paper does not even attempt to tell it. If I am right, however, then we have to separate the development of the prosimetric form within the context of Indian Buddhism, which Michael Hahn and others have written about at length, from a second, later, development of prosimetric forms, tied to the influence of Bāṇa. The first includes the genre of Jātakamālā and other story collections, including some that only survive in Chinese, but which must have been spectacular examples of the mixed prose-verse form: I am thinking of Kumāralāta’s Kalpanāmaṇḍitikā Dṛṣṭāntapaṅkti (third century CE), Saṅgharakṣa’s story of the Buddha’s life in the Saṅgharakṣasamuccaya (
I have suggested that up until the time of Daṇḍin, the campū was really the cạmpur, a popular genre (but “minor” from the elite perspective of Sanskrit discourse) wherein a storyteller would combine prose and verse to tell a comic story. Of course we would like more evidence for this suggestion.
The campū as we know it, however, is a post-Bāṇa development. It appears that Bāṇa’s revolutionary use of Sanskrit prose in his Kādambarī and Deeds of Harṣa inspired many poets to undertake similar experiments. I suspect that the use of mixed prose and verse in Prakrit, as we see it in Haribhadra’s Story of Samarāditya (early eighth century) and Uddyōtana’s Kuvalayamālā (779), is an attempt to combine Bāṇa’s innovative use of prose with the use of verse that earlier Prakrit stories, such as Taraṅgavaī, had established for narrative. Similarly Bāṇa had many admirers in Karnataka, where the use of mixed prose and verse characterizes the earliest period of intense literary production, from Pampa (941) to Nāgavarma (1042). Mixed prose and verse was surely one of the most popular genres of literature in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries of the common era. Clearly there was a complex set of influences that account for the trend, and only a careful study of Bāṇa and his successors in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Kannada will start to identify those influences. These traditions, however, did not refer to themselves, and were not referred to by others, with the name campū, until Trivikrama (ca. 915). Trivikrama, I argued, is probably “patient zero” for the use of campū to refer to a mixed prose-verse composition per se, and he probably learned (or mislearned) the word in this sense from Daṇḍin’s Mirror of Literature. Trivikrama started the trend of calling such compositions campū, and Sanskrit compositions that took him as a model also took from him this sense of campū. Eventually any work, in any language, that combined prose and verse could be called by this name.
References
Primary Texts
Abhinavabhāratī of Abhinavagupta (early eleventh century): K. Krishnamoorthy (ed.). The Nāṭyaśāstra of Bharatamuni with the Commentary Abhinavabhāratī by Abhinavaguptācārya. Vol. 1 (Chapters 1–7). Fourth edition. Vadodara: Oriental Institute, 1992.
Ānandakandacampū of Mitramiśra: Nanda Kishore Sharma (ed.). The Ānanda-kanda-champū by Mitra Miśra. Benares: Vidya Vilas Press, 1931.
Anantanāthapurāṇaṃ of Janna (ca. 1230 ce): D. Srinivasachar and H. R. Rangaswamy Iyengar (eds.). Anandanathapuranam by Janna. Mysore: Government Branch Press, 1930.
Analysis of Literature (Kāvyāvalōkanaṃ) of Nāgavarma II (ca. 1042 ce): H. Dēvīrappa (ed.). Nāgavarma Viracita Kāvyāvalōkanaṃ. Bengaluru: Kannaḍa Sāhitya Pariṣattu, 2004.
Bhārata in Veṇpā Verse (Pārataveṇpā) of Peruntēvaṉār: A. Kōpālaiyaṉ (ed.). 1924. Peruntēvaṉār Pāratam eṉṉum Pārataveṇpā, Uttiyōka Paruvam. Ceṉṉai: Centamiḻ Mantiram.
Campūrāmāyaṇa: Vāsudēva Śarmā (ed.). Campūrāmāyaṇam Lakṣmaṇasūriviracitaṃ Yuddhakāṇḍam, Rāmacandrabudhēndraviracitayā vyākhyayā samētam. Mumbaī: Tukārāma Jāvajī, 1917.
Critique of Religion (Dharmaparīkṣe) of Vṛttavilāsa (early fifteenth century): K. Raghavendra Rao (ed.). Vṛttavilāsa Viracita Dharmaparīkṣe. Mysore: University of Mysore, 1982.
Illumination of the Erotic (Śṛṅgāraprakāśa) by Bhōja (early eleventh century): Rewāprasāda Dwivedī (ed.). Śṛṅgāraprakāśa [Sāhityaprakāśa] by Bhojarāja. 2 vols. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 2007.
Jātakamālā of Āryaśūra (ca. 400 CE): See Basu 1989.
Kuvalayamālā of Uddyōtana (779 ce): A. N. Upadhye (ed.). Kuvalayamālā of Uddyotana Sūri. A Unique Campū in Prakrit. Bombay [Mumbai]: Bhāratīya Vidyā Bhavana, 1959.
Kuvalayamālākathā of Ratnaprabhasūri (1260s ce): A. N. Upadhye (ed.). Kuvalayamālā of Uddyotana Sūri. A Unique Campū in Prakrit. Part II: Ratnaprbha [sic] Sūri’s Kuvalayamālā Kathā. Bombay [Mumbai]: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1970.
Mirror of Literature (Kāvyādarśa) of Daṇḍin (ca. 700 ce): (1) With Yāmuna’s Vyākhyā, British Library OR 9340 (copied from a palm-leaf ms. on Sept. 29, 1923 by V. Venkaṭarāma Śarmā Śāstrī); (2) With the commentaries of Vādijaṅghāladēva, Taruṇavācaspati, and an anonymous commentator: Vē. Kṛṣṇamācārya (ed.). Ācāryadaṇḍiviracitaḥ Kāvyādarśaḥ. Tiruvādi: Tiruvādi Śrīnivāsa Mudraṇālaya, 1936. (3) With the commentary of Ratnaśrījñāna: Anantalal Thakur and Upendra Jha (eds.). Kāvyalakṣaṇa of Daṇḍin (Also Known as Kāvyādarśa), with Commentary Called Ratnaśrī of Ratnaśrījñāna. Darbhanga: Mithila Institute of Post-Graduate Studies and Research in Sanskrit Learning, 1957. (4) With the commentary of Jivananda Vidyasagar: Jivananda Vidyasagar (ed.). Kāvyādarśaḥ. Kalikātā [Kolkata]: Nārāyaṇayantra, 1890. [Second edition.] (5) With a Sinhalese sannaya: Ratmalānē Dharmakīrti Śrī Dharmārāma (ed.). Pūrvācāryaya Varapaṇḍitavyākhyānasahita Mahākaviśrīdaṇḍyācāryaya Viracita Kāvyādarśaya. Peliyagoda: Satyasamuccaya Press, 1925.
Nalacampū of Trivikrama (ca. 915 ce): Śivadatta (ed.). Damayantīkathā athavā Nalacampūḥ. Mahākaviśrītrivikramabhaṭṭaviracitā Caṇḍapālakṛtayā Viṣamapadaprakāśākhyavyākhyayā Sahitā. Mumbaī: Nirṇaya Sāgara Mudraṇayantrālayaḥ, 1884.
Naḷacampu of Cauṇḍarāja (ca. 1220 ce): H. R. Rangaswamy Iyengar and S. N. Krishna Jois. Nalacampu of Caundaraja. Mysore: Government Branch Press, 1952.
Ornament of Literature (Kāvyālaṅkāra) of Bhāmaha: Printed as an appendix in Kamalâśaṅkara Prâṇaśaṅkara Trivedî (ed.). The Pratâparudrayośobhûshaṇa of Vidyânâtha. With the Commentary, Ratnâpaṇa, of Kumârasvâmin, Son of Mallinâtha, and With a Critical Notice of Manuscripts, Introduction, Critical and Explanatory Notes and an Appendix Containing the Kâvyâlaṅkâra of Bhâmaha. Number 65 in Bombay Sanskrit and Prakrit Series. Bombay: Government Central Press, 1909.
Ornament of Our Own Language (Siya bas lakara) of Salameva (ca. 920 ce): Don Baron Jayatilaka (ed.). Siyabas Lakara or Sin̥halese Rhetoric by King Silámeghavarṇa paraphrased by Ratnamadhváchárya. Colombo, 1892.
Ratnaśrīṭīkā of Ratnaśrījñāna (ca. 925 CE): See Mirror of Literature (3).
Śrīghana’s Manual of Conduct (Śrīghanācārasaṅgraha): See Singh 1992.
Udayasundarī of Sōḍḍhala (ca. 1025 ce): C. D. Dalal and Embar Krishnamacharya (eds.). Udayasundarîkathâ of Soddhala [sic]. Baroda: Central Library, 1929.
Way of the Poet-King (Kavirājamārgaṃ) of Śrīvijaya (ca. 870 ce): T. V. Venkatachala Sastry (ed.). Śrīvijayaprabhūtaṃ Kavirājamārgaṃ. Tumakūru: Tumakūru Viśvavidyālaya, 2011.
Yaśastilakacampū by Sōmadēva (959 ce): Śivadatta and Kâshînâtha Pâṇdurang Parab (eds). The Yaśastilaka of Somadeva Sûri, with the Commentary of Śrutadeva Sûri. Kâvyamâlâ 70. Bombay [Mumbai]: Nirṇaya-Sâgara Press, 1901.
Secondary Literature
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C. R. Deshpande, Studies in Campū Literature (Delhi: Bharatiya Vidya Prakashan, 1992); see also S. K. De, “The Campū,” Journal of the Ganganath Jha Research Institute 1 (1943): 56–65, K. Suryanarayana Rao, “Origin and Development of Campūs,” in Felicitation Volume Presented to Mahamahopadhyaya Dr. V. V. Mirashi (Nagpur: Vidarbha Samshodhan Mandal, 1965, 175–188); Chavinātha Tripāṭhī, Campū Kāvya kā Ālōcanātmaka ēvaṃ Aitihāsika Adhyayana (Varanasi: Caukhambā Vidyābhavana, 1965); and G. Vedia, “Campū: An Experiment in Free-Style Composition,” Sambodhi 14 (1990): 49–56, and the same author’s Campūkāvya, Sāhitya ane Svarūpa (Gandhinagar: Saṃskṛta Sāhitya Akādamī, 1998). A characteristically thorough and critical survey of the scholarship (in Kannada) is found in T. V. Veṅkaṭācalaśāstrī, “Campu,” in H. M. Nāyaka (ed.), Kannaḍa Adhyayana Saṃstheya Kannaḍa Sāhitya Caritre, Mūraneya Sampuṭa (Mysore: Kannaḍa Adhyayana Saṃsthe, Maisūru Viśvavidyālaya, 1976), 300–330 (reprinted in T. V. Veṅkaṭācalaśāstrī, Śāstrīya vol. 2, Mysore: Sapna Book House, 290–319).
So Deshpande, Studies in Campū Literature, 67 (going so far as to say that the Vāsavadattā referred to by Bhōja was not Subandhu’s work but a campū composed prior to Patañjali in the second century BCE!); Veṅkaṭācalaśāstrī, “Campu,” 315 (daṇḍige pūrvōttarakālagaḷalli huṭṭidda campugaḷu kālagatiyinda naṣṭavāgirabahudē).
Deshpande, Studies in Campū Literature, 61–65.
gadyapadyamayī kāpi campūr ity abhidhīyatē (1.31; so the Thakur & Jha ed., as well as the Sinhala sannaya; the Kṛṣṇamācārya ed. reads kācic).
This is also true of the premodern renditions of Daṇḍin’s Mirror, such as the Kannada Ornament of Mādhava (Mādhavālaṅkāraṃ); see note 26.
Deshpande, Studies, 3 notes that Daṇḍin’s kācit (= kāpi) serves the purpose of “suggesting […] that each and every work containing a commingling of prose and verse may not necessarily be called a Campū.”
See Yāmuna (campukāvyasya gadyapadyayōr miśraṇamātram iti paścādupādānam iti mantavyam, p. 21, explaining why campū is mentioned second after nāṭaka in the miśra category).
See appendix D (pp. 79–80), “References to Champū,” in T. V. Venkatachala Sastry, Mahākāvyalakṣaṇa (Mysore: Centre of Excellence for Studies in Classical Kannada, 2015).
The anonymous Sanskrit commentary printed with Vādijaṅghāladēva and Taruṇavācaspati, saṃskṛtasyaivāpi gadyapadyamayatāstīty āha — gadyapadyēti (p. 29).
Ratnaśrīṭīkā p. 23 (sā ca jātakamālādamayantyādi).
Dragomir Dimitrov, The Legacy of the Jewel Mind: On the Sanskrit, Pali, and Sinhalese Works by Ratnamati: A Philological Chronicle (Phullalocanavaṃsa) (Naples: Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale,” 2016), 138 (ē campūkāvya nam jātakamālādamayantīādiya yi datayutu). Note that Dimitrov considers Ratnaśrījñāna to have actually written the sannaya; I consider it more likely that the sannaya borrowed liberally from Ratnaśrījñāna’s Sanskrit commentary.
For a review of the positions of Winternitz, Keith, von Glasenapp, Lienhard, and Warder, see Basu, Eine Literatur-kritische Studie zu Āryaśūras Jātakamālā zusammen mit einer kritischen Edition der anonymen Jātakamālāṭīkā und einer kritischen Edition der Jātakamālāpañjikā des Vīryasiṃha (Ph.D. thesis, Bonn, 1989), 95–96.
Indeed many discussions of campū start from these alleged precedents; see Deshpande, Studies in Campū Literature, 34–60.
Maurice Winternitz, History of Sanskrit Literature, Volume III (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1985), 411–413; Siegfried Lienhard, A History of Classical Poetry: Sanskrit—Pali—Prakrit (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1984), 265: “[…] it is inadvisable to use the term campū indiscriminately of any mixture of verse and prose or to define as campū works like Āryaśūra’s Jātakamālā or, still less, a book of fables like the Hitopadeśa, as it is often done.”.
Lienhard, A History of Classical Poetry, 267.
Michael Hahn, Haribhaṭṭa and Gopadatta (Tokyo: The Reiyukai Library, 1977), 4, and following him Ratna Handurukande, Five Buddhist Legends in the Campū Style (Marburg: Indica et Tibetica Verlag, 1984); Michael Hahn, Haribhaṭṭa in Nepal: Ten Legends from His Jātakamālā and the Anonymous Śākyasiṃhajātaka (Tokyo: The International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 2007), 40; Basu, Eine Literatur-kritische Studie, 241–242: gadyapadyam artharūpi campūr ity abhidhīyatē.
Lienhard, History of Classical Poetry, 265–266.
Christine Chojnacki, Kuvalayamālā: Roman jaina de 779 composé par Uddyotanasūri: Vol. I. Étude (Marburg: Indica et Tibetica Verlag, 2008), consulted in the English translation of Alexander Reynolds (Uddyotanasūri’s Kuvalayamālā: A Jain Novel from 779 AD, First Volume, Bangalore: Sapna Book House, 2018), pp. 84, 74. See also Chojnacki’s “The emergence of the Campū genre in Prakrit before the 10th century: Uddyotana’s Kuvalayamālā and Śīlānka’s Cauppannamahāpurisacariya,” in Luitgard and Jay Soni (eds.), Sanmati: Essays in Honour of Prof. Hampa Nagarajaiah’s 80th Birthday (Bangalore: Sapna Book House, 2015), 97–117.
K. K. Handiqui, Yaśastilaka and Indian Culture (Sholapur: Jaina Saṃskṛti Saṃrakshaka Sangha, 1968), 86. Note that Guṇacandra’s work in mixed prose and verse is different from the Mahāvīracariya composed by Nēmicandra in verse just two years later.
Kuvalayamālākathā, p. 1, v. 10 (dākṣiṇyacihnamunipēna vinirmitā yā prāk prākṛtā vibudhamānasarājahaṃsī | tāṃ saṃskṛtēna vacasā racayāmi campūṃ sadyaḥ prasahya sudhiyaḥ pravilōkayantu ||).
Kamil Zvelebil, Companion Studies to the History of Tamil Literature (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 68.
T. V. Veṅkaṭācalaśāstrī gives the title “Campu” to his contribution on this literary form.
I thank Harshita Mruthinti Kamath, Ilanit Loewy Shacham, and Sivan Goren-Arzony for this information.
See Andrew Ollett and Sarah Pierce Taylor, “The Way of the Poet-King: Authority, Intertextuality, Language,” in Yigal Bronner (ed.), A Lasting Vision: Dandin’s Mirror in the World of Asian Letters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 111.
pesaroḷe campuvin’ ikku gadyapadyamayaṅgaḷ (Veṅkaṭācalaśāstrī, “Campu,” 301).
Way of the Poet-King 1.28:
“Vimaḷōdaya and Nāgārjuna, together with Jayabandhu, Durvinīta and others acquired the fame of being gurus in the ashram of prose by writing in this category.”
The list is probably not arranged in chronological order, if we consider the corresponding list of verse writers in 1.31 (Guṇasūri, Nārāyaṇa, Bhāravi, Kālidāsa, and Māgha). Durvinīta tells us in several copper-plate inscriptions that he (a) composed a work called śabdāvatāra, (b) composed the vaḍḍakathā in Sanskrit, and (c) wrote a commentary on the fifteenth sarga of the Kirātārjunīya (Uttanūr, Divē Āgar, and Gummareḍḍipura, nos. 21, 22 and 24 respectively in K. V. Ramesh, Inscriptions of the Western Gangas [Delhi: Indian Council of Historical Research, 1984]). None of these works appears to be a Kannada gadyakathā, although the Śabdāvatāra might have been in Kannada (note that Pūjyapāda, who is said to have been Durvinīta’s teacher, composed a Śabdāvatāra in Sanskrit that comments on Pāṇini’s sūtras). See H. K. Jayadēva, “Kavirājamārgadavarigina Sāhitya Kṛtigaḷu mattu Śāstragranthagaḷu,” in Samagra Kannaḍa Sāhitya Caritre 1 (Beṅgalūru: Beṅgalūru Viśvavidyālaya, 1974), 71–78, who reports Chidananta Murthy’s opinion that we are dealing with two separate Durvinītas.
M. Mariyappa Bhaṭṭa, “Campūkāvyada Prārambhakāraru,” in Samagra Kannaḍa Sāhitya Caritre 1 (Beṅgalūru: Beṅgalūru Viśvavidyālaya, 1975), 57. Also noted by Veṅkaṭācalaśāstrī, “Campu,” 323–324. The much-discussed bedaṇḍe and cattāṇaṃ, which are mentioned in several works of poetics, including Śrīvijaya’s, but of which no examples survive, do not appear to have featured prose; see the discussion of Janna’s Anantanāthapurāṇaṃ below.
Veṅkaṭācalaśāstrī, “Campu,” 324.
Siya bas lakara 1.13. Ruvanmi’s commentary on this verse is: sapu yī kiyū, campūyayi kivāvū; peden visituru, padyayen vicitravū; yam vadan paban̆dek da; yam vacana prabandhayek ädda; ē kavban̆dek siridu, ē kāvyabandhana śriyada; siyabasin vanu mänavi, svakiyavū siṅhala bhāṣāven varṇanā kaḷa mänavi. I thank Charles Hallisey for generously providing me with the text and the translation of the relevant passages, since I sadly do not read Sinhala.
Dimitrov, The Legacy of the Jewel Mind, 113, 122. See also Charles Hallisey. “‘May It Always Be about Adding Beauty to Beauty’: The Story of the Mirror in Sri Lanka,” in Yigal Bronner (ed.), A Lasting Vision: Dandin’s Mirror in the World of Asian Letters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 145.
See also Dimitrov, Legacy of the Jewel Mind, 116–117.
Mirror of Literature 1.37c (ōsarādir apabhraṃśō). The ōsara was composed in Apabhraṃśa alone; no examples survive.
Yigal Bronner, “Dandin and the Dawn of Kashmiri Poetics,” in Yigal Bronner (ed.), A Lasting Vision: Dandin’s Mirror in the World of Asian Letters (New York: Oxford University Press: 2023), 264.
Eye p. 324 (on the prose vṛtti to 3.7: ādigrahaṇāc campūḥ, yathāha daṇḍī gadyapadyamayī campūr iti); Ingalls, Masson and Patwardhan, 420.
Analysis of Literature sūtra 238 (v. 949): gadyamayaṃ padyamayaṃ tad-yamaḷa-vimiśram endu kṛti mūṟuteṟaṃ.
Analysis of Literature sūtra 239 (v. 950): berasi bare gadyapadyamav eraḍuṃ kṛti campuv emba pesaraṃ paḍeguṃ.
For Daṇḍin’s influence, see Analysis of Literature v. 961: vāmananuṃ rudraṭanuṃ bhāmahanuṃ daṇḍiyuṃ manaṅgoḷe pēḻd’ ant’ ī mahige negaḻe pēḻdaṃ dāmōdaratanayan ī vacōlaṅkṛtiyaṃ.
Udayāditya: kannaḍadoḷ campūkṛti sannutatara vacanakāvyam enikuṃ (Veṅkaṭācalaśāstrī, “Campu,” 325); for Mādhava see note 25 above.
In his discussion of the “non-separation from rasa at the level of the composition” (prabandhaviṣayō rasāviyōgaḥ, ch. 11, p. 659).
Bhōja doesn’t mention it or quote from it in his literary-theoretical works, and Bhōja calls himself mahārājādhirājaparamēśvaraśrībhōja in (e.g.) his Śṛṅgāramañjarīkathā, rather than vidarbharāja. Several colleagues have suggested to me that premodern authors considered the Campūrāmāyaṇa to be a work of the Paramāra king Bhōja. This may be true, given that “Bhōja(rāja)” without further qualification would probably have been understood to refer to the most famous bearer of that name. But neither Lakṣmaṇasūri (who wrote a yuddhakāṇḍa to complete the Campūrāmāyaṇa) nor Rāmacandra Budhēndra (who wrote a commentary on the Campūrāmāyaṇa, including Lakṣmaṇasūri’s yuddhakāṇḍa) mention any further details about the author.
I follow Caṇḍapāla’s commentary in taking muktaka as referring to prose, in contrast to vṛtta, but it could of course refer to isolated verses as well.
Naresh Keerthi suggests (“Bāṇana Mukuṭatāḍitaka mattu Rannana Gadāyuddha,” Kannaḍa Sāhitya Pariṣat Pattrike 100 [2022]: 73) that Trivikrama acknowledges his patron in v. 2 (kandarpadēva = Indra III). I am not certain. That would place the composition of the Damayantī between 915 and 927. But in any case Indra III is the only king with whom Trivikrama is known to be associated.
As noted by Handiqui, Yaśastilaka and Indian Culture, 86: “There is […] no doubt that this form of composition became popular in the Deccan in the tenth century in Sanskrit as well as in Kanarese literature.”
Handiqui, Yaśastilaka and Indian Culture.
Handiqui, Yaśastilaka and Indian Culture, 86, 76.
A. K. Warder, Indian Kāvya Literature, Volume Six: The Art of Storytelling (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1992), §4586.
Sudarshan Kumar Sharma, Tilakamañjarī of Dhanapāla: A Social and Cultural Study (Delhi: Parimal Publications, 2002), 23.
I thank Aleksandar Uskokov for pointing this out to me. I note that Rembert Lutjeharms, A Vaisnava Poet in Early Modern Bengal: Kavikarnapura’s Splendour of Speech (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 251 n. 29, mentions a Campūlakṣaṇam attributed to Jīva Gōsvāmin, which I have not seen.
For the date see R. Narasimhacharya, Karṇāṭaka Kavicarite, Volume 1 (To the end of the 14th Century) (Bangalore: Bangalore Press, 1924), p. 335. I thank an anonymous reviewer for JSAIH for directing my attention to the works of Janna and Cauṇḍarasa in this context.
Ananthanāthapurāṇaṃ, p. 225 (prose after verse 10.78).
See Jamal Jones, A Poetics of Power in Andhra, 1323–1450 CE (Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, 2018), 106. Gaurana has cūrṇakam, kalikā, utkalikā, citra, lalita, khaṇḍam, and gadyapadyam.
See Rangaswamy Iyengar’s preface, p. xii (ī granthadalli mukhyavāduvu trivikramabhaṭṭana naḷacampu, śrīharṣana naiṣadakāvya mattu ivellakū modalāda bhāratada naḷōpākhyāna). The editor notes that Mallikārjuna has borrowed a few verses from the Naḷacampu in his Sūktisudhārṇava, which should place the work before 1245 (p. viii). R. Narasimhacharya (Karṇāṭaka Kavicaritre p. 403), assigns him the oft-repeated date of 1300, which is a guess based on the poet’s Abhinavadaśakumāracaritraṃ.
See v. 8 (p. 2).
For the date, see Heleen De Jonckheere, The Never-ending Test: A Jain Tradition of Narrative Adaptations (Ph.D. thesis, Ghent University, 2020), 214–216. The entry for campū in the largest Kannada dictionary cites only Nāgavarma and the Kannaḍa Kaipiḍi. See G. Veṅkaṭasubbayya (ed.), Kannaḍa Sāhitya Pariṣattina Kannaḍa Nighaṇṭu, volume 3 (Beṅgalūru: Kannaḍa Sāhitya Pariṣattu, 1977), 2721.
Deshpande, Studies in Campū Literature, 21–26; reviewed in Suryanarayana Rao, “Origin and Development of Campūs,” and Veṅkaṭācalaśāstrī, “Campu,” 309–312.
Harold Bailey, Dictionary of Khotan Saka (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 99. Helmut Rix, Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2001), 342, 351, provisionally takes *√kamp “bend” to be a separate root, reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European, from *√k(u)emp “tremble,” which is only reconstructed for Proto-Indo-Iranian.
F. B. J. Kuiper, “Indoiranica,” Acta Orientalia 16 (1938): 310: “Ob man dieser Erklärung zustimmt oder nicht, eine auffallende Tatsache ist es jedenfalls, dass ein einheimischer Name gerade für eine so verfeinerte Kāvya-Kunst gewählt worden ist. Dies setzt, wie mir scheint, die Existenz einer verwandten einheimischen Literaturgattung mit Notwendigkeit voraus. […] Hat man aber den Namen erst gewählt, als diese Kāvya-Kunst schon voll entwickelt war, so kann dies nur geschehen sein, weil ihr in den einheimischen Sprachen etwas entsprach, wenn auch nicht gleichwertig, doch wenigstens nicht allzu roh und barbarisch schien.”
P. J. Zoetmulder, Old Javanese–English Dictionary (’s-Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1982), 296: “campur mixed; unclean, in a state of impurity (because of menstruation), defiled.”
vruḥ yan campur avaknya, “they thought that its child was impure,” Ādiparva p. 7 (what Janamējaya’s brothers think of Sāramēya); sāvitrī ṅaran ira strī patibrata, tan dadi katōn dēniṅ vvaṅ campur “Sāvitrī is what they call a pativratā woman, for whom it is impossible that she should be seen by an inappropriate man” (p. 13); apan atyanta campur ikaṅ naramāṅsa “for this human flesh is extremely impure” (p. 163). There are many similar examples from later literature. I found these references using sealang.net, although the functionality for searching the Javanese corpus appears to have disappeared in the meantime.
K. A. Adelaar, “More on Proto-Malayic,” in Mohd. Thani Ahmad and Zaini Mohamed Zain (eds.), Rekonstruksi dan Cabang-Cabang Bahasa (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia, 1988), 62; quoted in Graham Thurgood, From Ancient Cham to Modern Dialects: Two Thousand Years of Language Contact and Change (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999), 81–82. See also Robert Blust, The Austronesian Languages (Canberra: The Australian National University, 2013), 563–567.
Manfred Mayrhofer, Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 2001), v. 3, p. 181.
Kuiper, “Indoiranica,” 309; A. Campbell, A Santali-English Dictionary (Pokhuria: The Santal Mission Press, 1899), 88; P. O. Bodding, A Santal Dictionary, Volume I, A-C (Oslo: Hos Jacob Dybwad, 1932), 498. The examples Campbell gives are: cạmpur katha alom roṛa “do not tell a concocted story” and ạḍi cạmpur hoṛ kanae “he is a great yarning fellow.” Bodding gives cạmpur katha ḍher menaḱtaea “he has a large amount of jocular language.” Note the co-occurrence of cạmpur with katha.
J. Duncan Derrett, A Textbook for Novices: Jayarakṣita’s « Perspicuous Commentary on the Compendium of Conduct by Śrîghana » (Torino: Edizioni Jollygrafica, 1983), 6–7; for a reconstruction, see Sanghasen Singh, “On the Restoration of the Śrīghanācārasaṃgraha,” in H. S. Prasad (ed.), Philosophy, Grammar, and Indology: Essays in Honour of Professor Gustav Roth (Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1992), 283–302. Note that, for lack of an alternative, I follow Derrett’s dating of the Śrīghanācārasaṅgraha and its commentary, although one may take issue with some of his reasons.
Derrett, A Textbook for Novices, 79, suggests “lampoon.”
For this distinction see Christian Novetzke, Religion and Public Memory: A Cultural History of Saint Namdev in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 100.
See Abhinavabhāratī vol. 1 pp. 169, 178–179 and Bose, Mandakranta. “Uparūpaka: A Hybrid Genre of Drama in the Sanskritic Tradition.” International Journal of Hindu Studies 4.3 (2000): 295–296.
Noted already by A. N. Upadhye, Rudradāsa’s Candralekhā (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1967), 29; for these genres see V. Raghavan, Bhoja’s Śṛṅgāra Prakāśa (Madras: Punarvasu, 1963), 536–568.
See Chandramouli S. Naikar, The Prakrit Plays of India (Dharwad: Medha Publishers, 1998).
Bose, “Uparūpaka,” 305.
Upadhye, Rudradāsa’s Candralekhā, 29.
Abhinavabhāratī vol. 1 p. 178.
Mayrhofer, Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen, v. 3, p. 232; F. B. J. Kuiper, Proto-Munda Words in Sanskrit (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandsche Akademie van Wetenschappen, 1948), 87.
Harivallabh Bhayani, “Ḍombikā and Ṣiḍgaka,” in Indological Studies: Literary and Performing Arts, Prakrit and Apabhraṁśa Studies (Ahmedabad: Parshva Prakashan, 1993), 25.
Bhayani, “Ḍombikā and Ṣiḍgaka,” 27–28.
Bhayani, “Ḍombikā and Ṣiḍgaka,” 29.
Bhayani, “Ḍombikā and Ṣiḍgaka,” 30.
Bhayani, “Ḍombikā and Ṣiḍgaka,” n. 24. See Kuiper, Proto-Munda Words, 125–126. The derivation from śṛṅga “horn” is considered difficult (at least by scholars who don’t speak a language where the word “horny” is in common use), and I am incapable of evaluating Kuiper’s claims, but the idea that śṛṅgāra is a Sanskritization of siṅgāra makes very good sense to me. See also Kuiper, Proto-Munda Words, 144, for a similar word meaning “young,” possibly attested across Prakrit siṅgaa “boy,” Marathi śigā “foal,” and Santali ce̱ṅgo̱ṛ “small, immature.”
Raghavan, Bhoja’s Śṛṅgāra Prakāśa, 566.
Kuiper, Proto-Munda Words in Sanskrit, 135.
Bose, “Uparūpaka,” 296, 305.
Mayrhofer, Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen, v. 3, p. 535. According to R. L. Turner, A Comparative Dictionary of the Indo-Aryan Languages (London: Oxford University Press, 1962–1966), entry 14018 (*hallati) on p. 811, the verbal root *√hall is not found in Sanskrit apart from lexicons, but is attested in Prakrit and later Indic languages (for example Hindi hālnā).
The Petersburger Wörterbuch (Otto Böhtlingk and Rudolph Roth, Sanskrit Wörterbuch [St. Petersburg: Eggers, 1855]) cites a page range of a specific edition of the Mirror of Literature as evidence for the word hallīśaka (p. 1570). The edition used, however, is never identified. Daṇḍin’s Mirror never uses the word, and nor do any of the premodern commentators, as far as I can tell. It does occur, however, in Jibananda Vidyasagar’s modern commentary (p. 19, on v. 1.39). The confusing citation probably led Monier Monier-Williams (A Sanskrit-English Dictionary [Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1899], 1293) and Manfred Mayrhofer (Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen, vol. 3. p. 535), likely independently, to state incorrectly that the word is found in the Mirror of Literature.
As already compared by Vedia, “Campū,” 51 and Campū—Sāhitya ane Svarūpa, 8, citing K. Kunjunni Raja, The Contribution of Kerala to Sanskrit Literature, (Madras [Chennai]: University of Madras, 1958).
Suryanarayana Rao, “Origin and Development of Campūs,” 179.
Hahn, Haribhaṭṭa in Nepal, 40–41; also the table in Hahn, Haribhaṭṭa and Gopadatta, 4: “early Campū” includes “Kumāralāta’s Kalpanāmaṇḍitikā and Saṅghasena’s legends,” “Campū” includes “Āryaśūra’s Jātakamālā and Maitrakanyaka,” and “Degeberated (sic) Campū” includes “Gopadatta’s Saptakumārikāvadāna.” See Martin Straube, “Narratives: South Asia,” in Jonathan Silk (ed.), Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism, Volume 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 500–502, who points out that *Bodhisattvāvadānasūtra (