Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v1.c27.1

v1.c27.1

The earliest writer on Poetics who quotes Bhoja seems to be Hemacandra¹, who flourished as we shall see, in the first half of the 12th century; while Vardhamāna, who however did not write till 1140 A.D., mentions Bhoja in the second verse of his Gaṇaratna, the vṛtti on which explains this Bhoja as the author of the Sarasvatī-kaṇṭhābharaṇa. The latest writer quoted by Bhoja appears to be Rājaśekhara², whose latest date is the beginning of the 10th century, although some verses from the Caura-pañcāśikā (no. 12, ed. Bohlen), attributed to Bilhaṇa, occur in the Sarasvatī-kº (ad i 152)³. Bhoja appears also to refer in one verse (ad i 71, p. 22) to Muñja, apparently Muñja-vākpatirāja of Mālava. Jacob⁴ in misleading in putting down the name of Nami-sādhu, (who did not write his commentary on Rudraṭa till 1069 A.D.) in the list of authors quoted by Bhoja; for the verses in question, though found in Nami, are not Nami's own but really quoted by him from previous authors¹ Bhoja also quotes about sixteen times from the *Daśarūpaka* and its commentary, which belong to the time of Muñja, i.e. the end of the 10th and the beginning of the 11th century. The internal evidence of the text, therefore, places the author of the *Sarasvatī-k°* in the period between the second and the fourth quarters of the 11th century; and as this date fits in easily with the known dates of the 9th Paramāra ruler Bhoja of Dhārā, one of the well-known princes of the 11th century, noted for his patronage of letters, the two may be taken to have been reasonably identified. Our Bhoja is frequently cited in later *Alaṃkāra* literature as Bhojarāja, and some times simply as *rājan*² which designation, like that of muni applied to Bharata, seems to mark him out *par excellence* in this literature.