History of the Pallavas of Kanchi c15.s1.4

c15.s1.4

Of Mahēndravarman I, the illustrious son and successor of Simhavishṇu, more is known. His great command of Sanskrit is fully seen in his work Mattavilāsa Prahasana which has survived to our times. This has already been noticed while dealing with this king in an earlier chapter. The great musical inscription at Kuḍumiyāmalai about the same period, as well as the beautiful Sanskrit compositions at the Trichinopoly rock-cut temple and elsewhere are also indicative of the refined taste for Sanskrit composition at this period. It was during the reign of one of his successors that Daṇḍin, the celebrated savant, spent considerable time in the Pallava court, even paying a visit to the wonderful sculptures of Mahāmallapuram. It is not improbable that this was towards the close of the seventh century A.D. The Avantisundarikathāsāra contains interesting details of an earlier sojourn of Daṇḍin in the south, while quite young, when Kāñchīpuram was in the throes of foreign invasion and siege by the Chāḷukyas, when the citizens of the place had to desert the city temporarily. Daṇḍin returned to Kāñchī long after and in all probability flourished for long at the Pallava court. Mātṛidatta, a poet and scholar and Rāma Śarman, also figure among the friends of Daṇḍin and were perhaps associated with him at Kāñchīpuram. The names of Sanskrit poets at the Pallava court during this period other than these are not known. It is held by some scholars that the Sanskrit plays published recently in Trivandrum as Bhāsa’s were abridgements made during this period of earlier works of Bhāsa and Śūdraka for being staged at the Pallava court. It has been suggested by Mr. L. D. Barnett that these are the works of an anonymous author in the court of the Pāṇḍyan King Rājasimha.¹ But as we have got evidence that the Pallava court was the great centre of Sanskrit learning during this period it seems to be more correct to regard that the dramas referred to above were intended to be staged at the Pallava court as is evident from the colophons of some of these plays.² It has been presumed also that the work was composed at Kāñchī from the occurrence of the name of Dantivarman in the manuscripts of Mudrā-rākshasa found in Malabar in the last benedictory verses.