The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c10.s1.2

c10.s1.2

What we knew before the publication of Bhāsa was simply his high reputation. Kālidāsa in his first work, the Mālavikāgnimitra, refers to Bhāsa, with Saumilla, Kaviputra, and others as his great predecessors in the art, whose fame renders difficult the acceptance of the work of an untried author. Bāṇa,¹ at the beginning of the seventh century, states that Bhāsa attained fame by his dramas, begun by the Sūtradhāra, with many rôles and including episodes, as one might by the erection of temples, begun by the architect, with many stages, and beflagged. It would be unwise to prove by this that Bhāsa innovated in these regards; what is essential to Bāṇa is to celebrate Bhāsa's fame, and to show his wit by the comparison in the same words with some not very obvious object of comparison. A century later Vākpati² declares his pleasure in Bhāsa, friend of fire (jalamitte), in the author of the Raghuvamśa, in Subandhu and Hāricandra. Rājaçekhara (c. A. D. 900) places him among the classical poets, and a verse records a curious incident: ‘Critics cast on the fire, to test it, the discus composed of the dramas of Bhāsa; the Svapnavāsavadattā did not succumb to the flames'.¹ The verse, however, contains a *double entendre* strangely ignored by Professor Konow;² it denotes of course the superiority of the *Svapnavāsavadattā* to the other dramas of Bhāsa—a fact which the published plays bear out to the full—but it also alludes to a reason; the play itself contains a fire, which was feigned by the minister to permit the possibility of the king's new marriage, and it is only appropriate that, as that fire could not burn the queen, so the fire which tried the play was unable to prevail against it. The passage throws the necessary light on the term 'friend of fire' of Vākpati, which should not be rendered meaningless by attributing it to the fact that Bhāsa often mentions fire in his dramas.