''Prabandha-Chintamani'' (
IAST
The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during ...
: Prabandha-cintāmaṇi) is an Indian
Sanskrit-language collection of ''
prabandhas'' (semi-historical biographical narratives). It was compiled in c. 1304 CE, in the
Vaghela kingdom of present-day
Gujarat, by
Jain scholar
Merutunga.
Contents
The book is divided into five ''prakasha''s (parts):
# Prakasha I
#*
Vikramarka Vikramarka may refer to:
*Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka (born 1961), Indian politician
*''Bhatti Vikramarka
Bhatti Vikramarka () is a 1960 Indian Telugu-language swashbuckling adventure film, produced by P. V. V. Satyanarayana Murthy under the P. ...
#*
Shatavahana
#*
Munja
#*
Mularaja
# Prakasha II
#*
Bhoja and
Bhima
In Hindu epic Mahabharata, Bhima ( sa, भीम, ) is the second among the five Pandavas. The ''Mahabharata'' relates many events that portray the might of Bhima. Bhima was born when Vayu, the wind god, granted a son to Kunti and Pandu. Af ...
# Prakasha III
#*
Jayasimha Siddharaja
# Prakasha IV
#*
Kumarapala
#* Viradhavala
#*
Vastupala and Tejapala
# Prakasha V
#*
Lakshmanasena
#*
Jayachandra
#*
Varahamihira
#*
Bhartrihari
#*
Vaidya Vagabhatta
Historical reliability
As a work of history, ''Prabandha-Chintamani'' is inferior to contemporary historical literature, such as the Muslim chronicles. Merutunga states that he wrote the book to "replace the oft-heared ancient stories which no longer delighted the wise". His book includes a large number of interesting anecdotes, but many of these anecdotes are fictitious.
Merutunga finished writing the book in c. 1304 CE (1361
Vikrama Samvat). However, while narrating historical incidents, he does not give much importance to contemporary period, of which he possessed direct knowledge. His book contains historical narratives from 940 CE to 1250 CE, for which he had to rely on oral tradition and earlier texts. Because of this, his book ended up becoming a collection of unreliable anecdotes.
Several contemporary or near-contemporary works of Gujarat do not mention any dates while narrating historical incidents. Merutunga perhaps realized that it was important to mention exact dates in writing history, and provides several dates in his ''Prabandha-Chintamani''. However, most of these dates are wrong by a few months or a year. It appears that Merutunga knew years of historical incidents from the earlier records, and fabricated the exact dates to make his work more believable.
[ ] The text also features instances of
anachronism
An anachronism (from the Ancient Greek, Greek , 'against' and , 'time') is a chronology, chronological inconsistency in some arrangement, especially a juxtaposition of people, events, objects, language terms and customs from different time per ...
; for example,
Varahamihira (6th century CE) is described as a contemporary of a
Nanda
Nanda may refer to:
Indian history and religion
* Nanda Empire, ruled by the Nanda dynasty, an Indian royal dynasty ruling Magadha in the 4th century BCE
** Mahapadma Nanda, first Emperor of the Nanda Empire
** Dhana Nanda (died c. 321 BCE), last ...
king (4th century BCE).
Since the work was composed in Gujarat, it portrays the rulers of Gujarat positively, in comparison to the rival rulers of the neighbouring kingdom of
Malwa.
Critical editions and translations
In 1888, Shastri Ramachandra Dinanatha edited and published ''Prabandha-Chintamani''. In 1901,
Charles Henry Tawney translated it into English at the suggestion of
Georg Bühler. Durgasankar Shastri revised Dinanatha's edition, and published it in 1932.
Muni Jinvijay
Muni Jinvijayji (27 January 1888 ― 3 June 1976) was a scholar of orientalism, archeology, indology and Jainism from India.
Biography
Jinvijay was born in Rupaheli, Mewad near Udaipur on 27 January 1888 to Vriddhisinh and Rajkumari. His birt ...
published another edition in 1933, and also translated the text into
Hindi language.
References
Bibliography
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{{ref end
External links
*
The Prabandhacintamani, or Wishing-stone of Narratives composed by Merutunga-Acharya, translated into English by C. H. Tawney
14th-century books
Medieval Indian literature
Works about monarchs
Sanskrit literature