A History of Sanskrit Literature c20.s1.29

c20.s1.29

The close contact of the literature of tales with the people is shown by the fact that later we find apparent Sanskrit versions of vernacular works as in the *Bharaṭakadvātriṃçikā*,⁵ tales intended to deride Brahmins, and obviously of Jain inspiration. Çivadāsa's *Kathārṇava*,⁶ thirty-five tales including stories of fools and thieves, is also late, and in Vidyāpati's *Puruṣaparīkṣā*,⁷ a collection of forty-four stories, we have the work of an author who won in the latter part of the fourteenth century fame as a Maithilī poet. To the same century belong also the unhistorical but interesting legends of authors and other important persons contained in the *Prabandhacintāmaṇi*⁸ and the *Prabandhakoça*⁹ of the Jain writers Merutuṅga and Rājaçekhara, while that collection of witty but quite untrustworthy legends of the court of Bhoja, the *Bhojaprabandha*¹⁰ of Ballālasena, is of the sixteenth century.