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The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c10.s2: 2. The Date of Bhāsa's Dramas

The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c10.s2

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2. The Date of Bhāsa's Dramas

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It is difficult to arrive at any precise determination of Bhāsa's date. That Kālidāsa knew his fame as firmly established is clear, and, if we may fairly safely date Kālidāsa about A. D. 400, this gives us a period of not later than A. D. 350 for Bhāsa. The fact of his priority to the Mṛcchakaṭikā leads us to no definite result, for the view that this play is to be placed before Kālidāsa in the third century A. D. is not at all plausible. An upper limit is given by the fact that Bhāsa is doubtless later than Açvaghoṣa, whose Buddhacarita is probably the source of a verse in the *Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa*, and whose Prākrit is assuredly and unquestionably older in character. It is useless to seek to estimate by the evidence of the Prākrit whether Bhāsa is more closely allied in date to Kālidāsa than to Açvaghoṣa, because changes in speech and the representation of them in literature are matters which do not in the slightest degree permit of exact valuation in terms of years. The most that can be said is that it may be held without improbability that Bhāsa is nearer to Kālidāsa’s period than to Açvaghoṣa’s.

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An effort at more exact determination is made by Professor Konow¹ on the ground that Bhāsa’s dramas in part deal with the story of Udayana, of which Ujjayinī was specially fond, as we know from Kālidāsa. Hence we may assume that the home of the poet was Ujjayinī, an assumption which obviously is not legitimate in any degree. Further we may assume that he lived under one of the Western Kṣatrapas, which again goes too far. Now the usual ending of a drama is not regularly observed in Bhāsa’s dramas; the introductory question is found only in the *Avimāraka*, *Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa*, *Bālacarita*, and *Dūtavākya*. The description of the final benediction as Bharatavākya is omitted in the *Madhyamavyāyoga*, where Viṣṇu is praised; in the *Dūtaghaṭotkaca*, where his commands are given; in the *Pañcarātra*, where the wish is expressed that the king (*rājasinha*) should rule the whole earth; and in the *Ūrubhaṅga*, where the wish is that the prince should conquer his foes and rule the earth. In the other plays a change of form of the Bharatavākya is asserted; in the *Karṇabhāra* there is the desire for the disappearance of misfortune; in the *Pratimānāṭaka* the wish is that the king may fare as Rāma who was reunited with Sītā and his kinsmen; in the *Avimāraka*, the *Abhiṣekanāṭaka*, and the *Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa*, that the king should, after destroying his foes, rule the whole earth, while in the *Svapnavāsavadattā*, *Dūtavākya*, and *Bālacarita*, the wish is for universal rule. This suggests that for a time the king reigned in peace; then enemies arose and disturbed his power; finally he again won the upper hand, and his friends could without absurdity pray for his attaining imperial rank. This would agree with the history of the Kṣatrapa Rudrasiṅha, who held from 181-8, and again from A. D. 191-6 the high rank of Mahākṣatrapa, and whose name may be hinted at in the use of the term rājasimha. That the *Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa* is older than the *Svapnavāsavadattā* is held to support this suggestion, but it is clearly without any merit save ingenuity.

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¹ KF. pp. 109 ff.

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Nor is there more to be said for Konow's other suggestions of date; the fact that the term Nāṭaka is used, and that the Vidūṣaka appears, cannot show that he is early, for they are used on continuously to the latest days of the drama, and the view that Bhāsa was an innovator who shortened the preliminaries, which is given as a reason for making him early, because the *Nāṭyaśāstra* gives the preliminaries in detail, is abandoned *sub silentio* in the author's later work,¹ where it is candidly admitted that we do not know whether he shortened the preliminaries at all. Nor can we say anything regarding his relation to the *Nāṭyaśāstra* which will aid us to a date; there is even a tradition that he himself wrote on the theory of the drama. Nor can any weight be attached to the view that Bhāsa stands nearer Aṣvaghoṣa in technique than Kālidāsa; these matters do not permit of precise evaluation in time, and, (if we place Bhāsa about A. D. 300, we go as far as the evidence allows.)

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¹ ID. p. 25; cf. Pischel, GGA. 1891, p. 361; below, p. 126.

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