Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v1.c42.1

v1.c42.1

The date of Vidyādhara, author of the *Ekāvalī*¹ has been fixed with sufficient approximation by Trivedi and R. G. Bhandarkar². The latest writer quoted and mentioned by Vidyādhara is Ruyyaka (p. 150); and this gives us one terminus to his date at the middle of the 12th century. This conclusion is apparently supported by Vidyādhara's mention (p. 19) of Śrīharṣa, author of the *Naiṣadha*, who lived very probably in the 12th century¹; but Vidyādhara’s allusion in the same context to the poet Harihara², who is said by him to have obtained amazing wealth from a prince Arjuna (presumably the ruler of Mālava of that name), puts this terminus a little lower at the first quarter of the 13th century. The Ekāvalī, in its turn, is quoted by Siṅgabhūpāla³, whose date is fixed at 1330 A. D. while Mallinātha, at the end of the 14th century, commented upon it. The internal evidence of the text, therefore, assigns it to a period between the first quarter of the 13th and the first quarter of the 14th century.