पस्तकवाचिका (pustakavācikā)

One of the characters introduced in the bhāṇa (“Causerie”) Pādatāḍitaka (“The Kick”) by Udīcya Śyāmilaka is a woman who recites or sings texts, a pustakavācikā, called Madayantī. I have not yet been able to find further evidence for the existence of women who were so occupied, and am even unsure if pustakavācikā may be no more than a caste-designation in the text. She is specifically said to have dumped a pustakavācaka learned in the triple Veda (traividyavṛddha), a friend of the bungling hero.

A male pustakavācaka is defined positively at Śivadharmottara 2.65cd–66ab: chandolakṣaṇatattvajñaḥ satkavir madhurasvaraḥ / gāndharvavid vidagdhaś ca śreṣṭhaḥ pustakavācakaḥ, “The best kind of Book-reciter is an expert in metrics, a good poet, sweet-voiced, a skilled musicologist.” (For further detail about the context in which this passage occurs see Alexis Sanderson, Religion and the State: Initiating the Monarch in Saivism and the Buddhist way of Mantras (forthcoming)).

However, the Svacchandatantra uses the label derisively as shorthand for those who fail to grasp the import of the teachings at 10.73ab: … etad eva hi pāṇḍityaṃ śeṣāḥ pustakavācakāḥ, “…this is true erudition, [all] others are just reciters.” (This half verse recurs at Tantrasadbhāva 10.84cd.)

In his Harṣacarita 3 p. 39 Bāṇa gives an elaborate (and of course very beautiful) description of such a pustakavācaka called Sudṛṣṭi who sings the Vāyupurāṇa to musical accompaniment:

sthitvā ca muhūrtam iva tatkālāpanītasūtraveṣṭanam api nakhakiraṇair mṛdumṛṇālasūtrair iva veṣṭitaṃ pustakaṃ puronihitaśaraśalākāyantrake nidhāya, pṛṣṭhataḥ sanīḍasanniviṣṭābhyāṃ MadhukaraPārāvatābhyāṃ vaṃśikābhyāṃ datte sthānake, prābhātikaprapāṭhakacchedacihnīkṛtam antarapatram utkṣipya, gṛhītvā ca katipayapatralaghvīṃ kapāṭikām, kṣālayann iva maṣīmalināny akṣasarāṇi dantakāntibhiḥ, arcayann iva sitakusumamuktibhir grantham, mukhasannihitasarasvatīnūpuraravair iva gamakair madhurair ākṣipan manāṃsi śrotṝṇāṃ gītyā Pavamānaproktaṃ purāṇaṃ papāṭha.

(the śaraśalākāyantraka is presumably a portable book-stand).

It is possible that the pustakavācaka is the same as the grānthika (who “expounds” an ākhyāna) mentioned by Hemacandra in his Kāvyānuśāsana, in the Śukasaptati 36, Pārāśarahorāśāstra 33.88 etc.