A History of Sanskrit Literature c21.s6.4

c21.s6.4

Besides his two romances, Bāṇa is credited with the *Caṇḍīçataka* and with the play *Pārvatīpariṇaya*. The feebleness of that work both in construction and style might have deterred critics from accepting the attribution, and in point of fact it is clear that it was the production of Vāmana Bhaṭṭa Bāṇa in the fifteenth century.² The ascription of the *Ratnāvalī* to him is also merely an idle surmise, for the limited imagination and restrained diction of the author of that piece are wholly unlike the over-fertile conception of Bāṇa and his amazing command of words. Later tradition recognized in him the poet who received, indeed, rich rewards from his royal patron, but whose picture of the king lived on for ever, long after the elephants and the jewels given to the singer had passed into nothingness.¹