The romantic novel written in Sanskrit by Banabhatta, the court poet of…

Concept

Classical Sanskrit prose narrative (gadya-kavya) is sorted by form. A katha is a romance: its plot is invented or freely reworked and it is told for the pleasure of the story itself. An akhyayika narrates events presented as having actually happened, and is the form used for biography. Neither of these is the same as a chronicle, which records rulers and dates in sequence, or a shastra, which is a systematic treatise on a branch of knowledge. So a work described as a romantic novel in Sanskrit must be a katha, not a chronicle and not a treatise.

Application

Banabhatta was the court poet (asthana-kavi) of Harshavardhana of Kannauj, who ruled roughly 606-647 CE. Two major prose works of his survive. Harshacharita is an akhyayika, a biographical account of his patron. Kadambari is a katha: the interwoven love stories of Chandrapida and Kadambari, and of Vaishampayana and Mahashveta, unfolding across successive rebirths. Banabhatta left it unfinished and his son Bhushanabhatta completed it. Matching the form asked for in the question to the form of each work, the romantic novel is Kadambari.

Contrast

• Rajatarangini is the Sanskrit verse chronicle of the kings of Kashmir written by Kalhana around 1148-1150 CE, five centuries after Harsha, and it is history rather than romance.

• Kamasutra is the shastra of Vatsyayana, usually placed around the third century CE; it is a systematic exposition, not a narrative work.

• Lipika is Rabindranath Tagore's 1922 collection of short prose pieces, written in Bengali and belonging to the modern period rather than to Sanskrit literature.

Result

The romantic novel in Sanskrit by Banabhatta is Kadambari.