Fwd: [BEF] Oxyrhynchus Papyri - Kannada passage

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---------- Forwarded message ----------N.S.Rajaram <nsrajaram

Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 7:10 PMRe: [bEF] Oxyrhynchus Papyri - Kannada passagebharatiyaexpertsforum Cc: Pvshastri, devakig

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My mother tongue is Kannada which I know quite well. The sentences sound almost like modern Kannada and hard to place in the 1st - 2nd CE. The oldest Kannada known dates to about 5th CE (Halmatti inscriptions) and is quite different from the fragments quoted.

 

Kannada at all times used Sanskrit words quite extensively so that is no cause for surprise. Charition, Charitan, or Charitiyan could easily be a Kannadiga name from that period. Shyama Shastry (discoverer of Kautilya's Artha shastra) was a very great scholar, much greater than Keith or Barnett who knew no Kannada at all. So it is not easy to dismiss his claim.

 

Incidentally, Malpe still exists, not far from Mangalore.

 

NS Rajaram

 

 

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kishore patnaik

; indiaarchaeology ; bharatiyaexpertsforum

Sunday, February 01, 2009 4:56 PM

[bEF] Oxyrhynchus Papyri - a note by Kishore patnaik

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

 

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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

 

 

 

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