Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v1.c23.1

v1.c23.1

Rājaśekhara, son of *mahāmantrin* Durduka or Duhika and Śīlavatī¹ and great-grandson of the poet Akālajalada of the Yāyāvara family, is better known as a poet and dramatist than as a writer on Poetics. In his *Bāla-rāmāyaṇa* i 12, Rājaśekhara describes himself as the author of six works which must have existed even before this presumably early production of his². It is not known whether his other three well-known dramas belong to this period, but it appears that he probably composed more than six works. Hemacandra (Comm. p. 335) cites a work of Rājaśekhara's, entitled *Hara-vilāsa*, as an example of a poem which bears the name of its author (*svanāmāṅktā*), and quotes two verses from the same (Comm. pp. 334-335); from which Ujjvaladatta also (ii 28) gives a half-verse. In the *Kāvya-mīmāṃsā*, again (xvii p. 98), there is a reference to another work of his own, called *Bhuvana-koṣa*, for information on universal geography. Ujjvaladatta (ii 76) also quotes a line from Rājaśekhara on the synonyms of Śiva, which, if not occurring in the *Hara-vilāsa*, was probably taken from an unknown lexicon by him.