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The Date of the Svapna-Vasavadatta

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

F. W. Thomas
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Extract

I do not propose on this occasion to initiate a general discussion concerning the authenticity of the plays discovered and edited by the late Mahāmahopādhyāya Gaṇapati Śāstrī and by him attributed to Bhāsa. Hitherto the matter has run rather a normal course, first enthusiastic acceptance, then opposition, then suggestions of a via media. The debate has evoked some treatises which will retain their value even after a consensus is reached. The various questions are, we may assume, familiar to all scholars here, the question of the formal characteristics of the dramas, of their titles, of the Prakrit and the Sanskrit, of imitations in or by other literary works, of references and citations in anthologies and works on poetics, of the history of the stage in the Kerala country.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 60 , Issue 4 , October 1928 , pp. 877 - 890
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1928

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References

page 878 note 1 See Śāstrī, Gaṇapati, JRAS. 1924, p. 668Google Scholar.

page 878 note 2 See Lévi, M. in J. As., 1923, 10–12, pp. 217–8Google Scholar.

page 878 note 3 Śāstrī, Gaṇapati, JRAS. 1924, p. 669Google Scholar.

page 879 note 1 The verse tam āpatantam (Raghu-vaṃsa, v. 50) begins as Bāla-carita, v. 2, which likewise refers to an attacking elephant.

page 880 note 1 For the Sandhi in śiropadhānam see Böhtlingk and Roth, s.v. śira, and cf. Divyāvadāna, 256, 1. 241, śirottara-paṭṭikā.

page 883 note 1 I note that the verse dhanyā khalu, etc. (Pratina, ii, 12), is cited, with variations, in the Kwalayānanda (ad. v, 71) and the Sāhitya-darpaṇa (ad. x, 59), and the verse dharmaḥ prāg eva cintyaḥ, (Avimāraka, i, 12), in the Śārṅgadhara-paddhati and elsewhere.

page 885 note 1 I observe that the comparison of the two verses has already been made by DrWeller, H. (Festgabe H. Jacobi, pp. 114–25)Google Scholar, who adduces also other significant parallelisms.

page 885 note 2 JRAS. 1922, p. 81 n.

page 885 note 3 In the similar passage, Bhartṛhari, i, 62, yenaitasmin nirayanagara-dvāram udghāṭayantī | vāmākṣīṇāṃ bhavati kuṭilā bhrūlatā kuñcikeva ‖ kuñcikā means a curved implement for opening a door, and is distinct from tālaka (see Divyāvadāna, p. 577, 11. 21, 27).

page 886 note 1 I must now add MrŚaṅkar, G. K., The Problem of Bhāsa (Patna, 1927), p. 6Google Scholar, and DrRaja, C. Kunhan, The Journal of Oriental Research, Madras, 1927, pp. 232–3Google Scholar.

page 889 note 2 Svapnavāsavadatta upar navo prakāś (Ahmedabad, 1925)Google Scholar. I may note that Prof. Dhruva seems also to be successful in finding a place for the verse pādākrāntāni, etc.

page 890 note 1 Dr. Kunhan Raja's attempt (loc. cit., pp. 218–22) to find Malayālam references in the plays seems to me quite fruitless. One of the words which he notes, viz. aṇṭhī, “stone of a fruit,” is merely a Prakrit form of Skt. asthi, aṣṭhi, which has that sense.