Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v1.c51.1

v1.c51.1

Appayya Diksita himself furnishes us with a clue to his date. He tells us at the end of his *Kuvalayānanda* that it was composed at the instance of a South Indian prince named Venkata¹. Aufrecht², and following him Eggeling³, identify this patron of Appayya with Venkata of Vijayanagara (about 1535 A.D.), while Hultzsch⁴ shows that he was Venkata I of Pennakonda, whose inscriptions range from *saka* 1508 to 1535 (= 1586 to 1613 A.D.).⁵ On the other hand, in the colophon to his *Sivādityamani-dīpikā* (Hultzsch 1056), Appayya mentions as his patron a prince Cinnabomma, the son of Cinavīra and father of Lingamanāyaka. The inscriptions of this chief of Velur (Vellore in the North Arcot District) are dated in *śaka* 1471 and 1488 (=1549 and 1566 A.D.)¹. The extreme limits, therefore, of Appayya’s literary activity are 1549 and 1613 A.D. We may thus assign him to the third and fourth quarters of the 16th century, and as he was alive in the time of Veṅkaṭa I he may have lived into the beginning of the 17th century². This date is confirmed by the fact that we find Appayya cited by Kamalākara Bhaṭṭa in the first quarter of the 17th century and attacked by Jagan-nātha about the same time; while Nīlakaṇṭha Dīkṣita (a grandson of Appayya’s brother), whose *Nīlakaṇṭha-campū* is dated in 1637 A.D., wrote a *Citramīmāṃsā-doṣa-dhikkāra*³ apparently in vindication of Appayya’s work of that name against Jagannātha’s attack.