A History of Sanskrit Literature c3.47

c3.47

The effort³ to strengthen the case for dating Daṇḍin later than Bhāmaha by using the evidence of the *Avantisundarīkathā* and its *Sāra* is clearly a complete mistake. The Kathā should never have been published from one mutilated manuscript, whose readings, even if correctly stated, have already been proved wrong by other manuscript evidence.⁴ Even, however, from the mutilated text it was clear that Bhāravi was not made out to be the great-grandfather of Daṇḍin, who is given as Dāmodara. But, as Dr. Dé⁵ has pointed out, even the most careless reader of the Kathā and the *Daçakumāracarita* should have been struck by the extraordinary difference of style between the two works, the Kathā rivalling unsuccessfully the worst mannerisms of the *Harṣacarita* and the *Kādambarī*. If a Daṇḍin wrote the work, he was assuredly not the author of the *Daçakumāracarita*, and its date may be centuries later than the great Daṇḍin, for there is no reason to accept the suggestion⁶ that the writer of the Kathā lived sufficiently soon after the famous Daṇḍin to be familiar with his genealogy and to work it into his story. it may be added that the effort¹ to find in v. 17 of the Kathā an allusion to *kāvyatraya* of Kālidāsa, thus confirming the denial to him of the *Ṛtusaṁhāra*, is wholly impossible and has not even the authority of the editor. It is very difficult to say whether we can derive from the Kathā any assurance as to Bhāravi's connexion with Viṣṇuvardhana or identify the latter with the prince who became Eastern Cālukya king in A.D. 615 and was the brother of that Pulakeçin, whose Aihole inscription (A.D. 634) mentions Bhāravi's fame, but at least there is no flagrant anachronism, though we know already of one literary forgery² which ascribes to Durvinīta of Koṅgaṇi a commentary on *Kirātārjunīya* xv.