Oxyrhynchus Papyri - a note by Kishore patnaik

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In

the year 1899 extensive excavations were carried out at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt at the

instance of Biblical Archaeological Association to further biblical research.

Excavations revealed a large collection of ancient manuscripts inscribed on

strips of papyrus. Selected papyri were published in five volumes. The third

volume "Literary papyri: Poetry" contains texts translated by D L Page with

extensive notes. [1] In this volume is a play described as a low sort of music

hall performance by an anonymous writer. The papyrus does not mention the title

or the author of the work and it is

ascribed to late 1st or 2nd century CE. However, the work

now is called as Charition, after the main character of the play. The plot occurs " on the coast of a

barbarian country bordering on the Indian Ocean "

The papyrus found might be a musician's copy, indicating in detail where he

should supply the background music or a " performance out line " .

 

In

some places the same king and his country men use their own language especially

when Charition has wine served to them to make them drunk. The identification

of the dialect as Kannada is made possible by one of the characters, who

interprets some of the words into Greek[2]

 

To

start with, it was Hultzach [3] who thought that this ancient Indian dialect

was Kannada. In the Mysore Archaeological Report for 1926 Dr Sama Shastri gave

an English translation of the Kannada passages. However Barnett [4] and Dr

Keith[5] rejected this theory. Page says in his notes: " The Chief sources

of amusement [of the play] are the humor of the clown and the gibberish of the

savages. In any event the ancient audience would have understood a syllable of

the jargon, they merely rejoiced in the humor of polysyllabic nonsense "

 

Well

known historian B A Saletore translated with the help of Pandit K. B.

Ramakrishnayya of Udipt of this so called gibberish into English from Kannada.

But the controversy about the language did not stop at that. P S Rai claims

that the language in the farce was Tulu, prevalent in Karnataka at the time.

Some scholars take it to be Tamil. There is significant reference to Indian

chiefs in the play, which simply means that the language is Indian. Saletore

has explained in detail the locale of the story, which again is Karnataka. Dr

Shastri;s analysis of the language proves it is Kannada.

 

The

theme of the play bears some similarity to the Greek play Iphigenia in Tauris

by Euripides. Page writes : " Iphigenia in Tauris was evidently the model

for the story (see Winter p 26): Charition = Iphigenia; the barbarian king =

Thoras; the foolish friend B = Pylades; in both works, the sister, priestess of

a goddess in a barbaric country , is rescued by her brother who outwits the

local king. Most striking too is the parallel between the theft of the sacred

image in IT and the proposed theft of the goddess's property in our mime)

Euripides' Cyclops probably suggested the detail of heroine's escape "

 

A

Greek girl, Charition, falls into the hands of the nayaka(king) of Malpe, an

ancient sea port

of Karnataka. She was

probably kidnapped from home and sold to him as a flute girl by traders

mentioned by Periplus of the Erythraen

Sea. The nayaka dedicates

her to the temple of the moon goddess, probably as a devadasi. Meanwhile her

brother arrives with a search party at Malpe after crossing the Indian Ocean. They serve intoxicating white wine to the

nayaka and his party. The nayaka gets drunk and the Greeks escape with the

girl.

 

Page

writes that the king intended to sacrifice the girl to Selene, in whose temple

she had taken refuge. There is however no evidence in the play to indicate such

a possibility. The king probably wanted to induct the fair skinned girl into

his harem. The play, particularly its ending, reminds us of the Dionysian myth

recorded by Megasthenes. The myth says that Dionysus won over Indians by

regaling them with wine. Again, Megasthenes speaks of girls with bows and

arrows who formed a part of the royal entourage. He says that when Indian kings

go for hunting females armed with bows and arrows accompany him and he moves in

a bacchanal fashion. Megasthanes writes : The care of the king's person is

entrusted to women who are bought from their parents… the purpose for which he

leaves his palace is to offer sacrifice, the third is to go for the chase for

which he departs in Bacchanalian fashion. Men with drums and gongs lead the

procession. The king hunts in the enclosures and shoots arrows from a platform.

At his side stand two or three armed women… of the women some are in chariots,

some on horses, and some even on elephants, and they are equipped with weapons

of every kind, as if they were going on a campaign " (Ancient India pp

71-73) The Indian king in the farce is seen following these descriptions.

Many

stray words have been traced but so far only two sentences have been read (such

words as 'akka'- elder sister in most of southern languages and "illai"- no in Tamil etc) and

these leave no doubt whatever as to their language having been Kannada.[6] One

of the sentences referred to is " bere koncha madhu patrakke haki "

which means " having poured a little wine into the cup separately " .

The other sentence is " Panam ber etti katti madhuvam ber ettuvenu "

which means " having taken up the cup separately and having covered (it), I

shall take wine separately " From the fact that the Indian language

employed in the papyrus is Kannada, it follows from that the scene of Charition's

adventures is one of numerous small ports on the western coast of India between

Dharwar and Mangalore and that Kannada was at least imperfectly

understood in that part of Egypt where the farce was composed and acted, for if

the Greek audience in Egypt did not understand even a bit of Kannada, the scene

of drinking bout would be denuded all its humor and would be entirely

purposeless. There were commercial relations of an intimate nature between Egypt and the western coast of India in the early centuries of Common era and

it is not strange if some people of Egypt understood Kannada. You

would see that the sentences quoted above contain words like patra, panam and

madhu which are genuine Sanskrit words.[7]

Probably,

the vice of drinking was spread by the Greeks who brought to Indian markets

their spirits and wines. In fact, when the character in the play says that wine

is not for sale in this country, he is echoing the information given by

Megasthenes in Indika that Indians never drink wine except for ritual sake

(Ancient India, p 60). In fact, Edith

Hall points out that the Indian kings are all

apparently fresh from a bath (leloumemoi , 56) which the following sequence of

drinking bout implies was connected with the rituals they were about to

perform. The influence of Megasthenes on this play is unmistakable.

 

However,

the play poses various questions; First and foremost, it does not escape an

immediate comparison with the story of Iphigenia. However, there is no proof to

show whether it is written prior to or after this myth of 2nd Century.

 

 

That

the author's name is unknown,( since the papyrus might be an insider's copy – may be meant for

musician or the director- and hence, does not mention the author's name; in

fact, the papyrus does not give even the title of

the work) does not help the situation any better. We also do not know whether it was enacted in India.

 

I

am not sure if the names of the port

of Malpe or the river Psolichus

or the moon Goddess Selene are correctly identified. The nayaka or the Indian

king also was not identified.

 

Secondly,

while we can not deny the author a knowledge of India,

it is not known how he has acquired it : did he acquire this knowledge by

actually visiting India

or just by reading the account of Megasthanese or hearing mariners' tales?

 

That

the bilingual composition could be a result of influence of bilingual Sanskrit plays

is again a learned guess.

 

It

is interesting to see that there is no apparent connection between the Greek

farce of 1st and 2nd c. CE and the amphitheatre at

Nagarjunakonda of Andhra Pradesh of the 3rd C. CE.

References

:

1 Oxyrhynchus

Papyri, Grenfell and Hunt, 1903, No. 413, p. 41 ff.

2. Thus

he interprets KOTTWS as iritlv Sos. The kannada for this is kodisu

3. JRAS,

1904, p 3901

4. Journal

of Egyptian Archaeology, XII, P I-II, pp 13-15

5. History

of Sanskrit Literature, p x

6. Hermes,

xxxix. p. 307. In the same way a Carthaginian in the Mercator of Plautus speaks

Punic.7.Lectures on the Ancient History of India from 650 - 325 B. C. By D. R. Bhandarkar

 

..

Links

:

 

1.http://www.abacon.com/brockett/DAMEN5a.htm

2.http://books.google.com/books?id=SyxOHOCVcVkC & pg=RA2-PA259 & lpg=RA2-PA259 & dq=greek+farce+indian+words+papyrus+egypt & source=web & ots=j6q1aKbTtu & sig=dQZH9QTHKZkqqexnLSkhe5RG0zY & hl=en & ei=DD2FSfz1JMPQkAXu84nCAw & sa=X & oi=book_result & resnum=3 & ct=result#PRA2-PA261,M1

3.http://www.rhul.ac.uk/research/CRGRIphigenia_in_India.pdf

4. http://www.archive.org/stream/intercoursebetwe020332mbp/intercoursebetwe020332mbp_djvu.txt