Reworking of a Pre‑Literary Plot in the Literary Jātaka: the Case of Haribhaṭṭa's Hastī‑Jātaka

Abstract

The article focuses on the comparison of a literary Sanskrit jataka with its possible Pali prototype. Haribhatta, who wrote another Jataka‑mala one or two centuries after Arya Sura, is generally believed to be Kalidasa's contemporary. Our research is devoted mainly to the approaches of a Sanskrit kavya poet handling a pre‑literary source story. We studied Haribhatta's tale of the elephant Bodhisattva (partly based on Pali jataka 514, Chaddanta‑jataka), focusing on his reworking of the plot and on the comparison of style of the two texts. The plot reworking was analyzed within the framework of narratology, revealing a deliberate artistic composition in the later Sanskrit text. The style of the Jataka‑mala bears semblance to Kalidasa's poetry, as well as to some other court Sanskrit literature works.