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The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c11.s2: 2. The Authorship and Age of the Mṛcchakaṭikā

The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c11.s2

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English

2. The Authorship and Age of the Mṛcchakaṭikā

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The discovery of the Cārudatta of Bhāsa has cast an unexpected light on the age of the Mṛcchakaṭikā, but has still left it dubious whether or not the author is to be placed before Kālidāsa. That this rank was due to him was the general opinion before Professor Lévi attacked the theory, and it is curious that later he should have inclined to doubt the value of his earlier judgement. The existence of the Cārudatta would explain, of course, the silence of Kālidāsa on the Mṛcchakaṭikā, if it existed in his time. Explicit use of the drama by Kālidāsa or the reverse would be conclusive, but unhappily none of the parallels which can be adduced have any effective force, and from rhetorical quotations we only have the fact that Çūdraka was recognized as an author by Vāmana,¹ for Daṇḍin’s citation of a verse found in the Mṛcchakaṭikā is now clearly known to be a citation from Bhāsa, in whose works the verse in question twice occurs. With this falls the hypothesis of Pischel,² who, after ascribing the play to Bhāsa, later fathered it upon Daṇḍin, to make good the number of three famous works with which he is in later tradition credited.

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¹ Lévi, TI. i. 198: Vāmana, iii. 2. 4.

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² Rudraṭa, pp. 16 f. But see Hari Chand, Kālidāsa, pp. 78 f.

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The play itself presents Çūdraka, a king, as its author and gives curious details of his capacities; he was an expert in the Ṛgveda, the Sāmaveda, mathematics, the arts regarding courtesans, and the science of elephants, all facts which could be concluded from the knowledge shown in the play itself; he was cured of some complaint, and after establishing his son in his place, and performing the horse sacrifice, he entered the fire and died at the age of a hundred years and ten days) We have a good deal more information of a sort regarding his personality; he was to Kalhaṇa in the *Rājatarangiṇī*¹ a figure to be set beside Vikramāditya; the *Skanda Purāṇa*² makes him out the first of the Andhrabhṛtyas; the *Vetālapañcaviṃśati* knows of his age as a hundred, and gives as his capital either Vardhamāna or Ṣobhāvatī, which is the scene of his activities according to the *Kathāsaritsāgara*, which tells of the sacrifice of a Brahmin who saves him from imminent death and secures his life of a hundred years by killing himself. In the *Kādambarī* he is located at Vidiṣā, and in the *Harṣacarita* we hear of the device by which he got rid of his enemy Candraketu, prince of Cakora, while Daṇḍin in the *Daśakumāracarita* refers to his adventures in several lives. The fact that Rāmila and Somila wrote a Kathā on him is significant of his legendary character in their time, considerably before Kālidāsa. A very late tradition in the *Vīracarita* and the younger Rājaśekhara³ brings him into connexion with Sātavāhana or Ṣālivāhana, whose minister he was and from whom he obtained half his kingdom, including Pratiṣṭhāna.⁴

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¹ iii. 343.

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² Wilson, *Works*, ix. 194.

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³ IS. xiv. 147; JBRAS. viii. 240.

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⁴ He is later the hero of a *Parikathā*, the *Ṣūdrakavadha* (Rāyamukuṭa, ZDMG. xxviii. 117), and of a drama, *Vikrāntaṣūdraka* (*Sarasvatīkaṇṭhābharaṇa*, p. 378).

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These references seem to suggest that Ṣūdraka was a merely legendary person, a fact rather supported than otherwise by his quaint name, which is absurd in a king of normal type. Nevertheless, Professor Konow treats him as historical, and finds in him the Ābhīra prince Ṣivadatta, who, or whose son, Īṣvarasena, is held by Dr. Fleet to have overthrown the last of the Andhra dynasty and to have founded the Cedi era of A.D. 248-9.⁵ This remarkable result is held to be supported by the fact that (in the play the king of Ujjayinī is Pālaka, and is represented as being overthrown by Āryaka, son of a herdsman (*gopāla*),) and the Ābhīras are essentially herdsmen. But this is much more than dubious; we have in fact legendary history in the names of Pālaka, Gopāla—to be taken probably in the *Mṛcchakaṭikā* as a proper name—and Āryaka. (The proof is indeed overwhelming, for Bhāsa, who is the source of so much of the *Mṛcchakaṭikā*, mentions in his *Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa* as sons of Pradyota of Ujjayinī both Gopāla and Pālaka, and the *Bṛhatkathā* must have contained the story of Gopāla surrendering the kingdom on Pradyota’s death to Pālaka, and of the latter having to make room for Āryaka, his brother’s son. To make history out of these events, which belong to the period shortly after the Buddha’s death, say 483 B. C., and history of the third century A. D., is really impossible. Ṣūdraka is really clearly mythical, as is seen by the admission that he entered the fire, for no one can believe that he foresaw his death-day so precisely, or that the ceremony referred to is that performed on becoming an ascetic, or even that the prologue was added after his death if it had been, it would have doubtless been of a different type. Still less can we imagine that he was helped in his work by Rāmila and Somila.

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⁵ KF. pp. 107 ff. Cf. Bhandarkar, *Anc. Hist. of India*, pp. 64 f.; CHI. i. 311.

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Windisch,¹ on the other hand, attempted to prove a close similarity between the plot of the political side of the play and the legend of Kṛṣṇa, instancing the prediction of Āryaka’s attaining the throne, the jealousy of the king and his efforts to destroy him, and the final overthrow of the tyrant. The similarity, however, is really remote; the story is a commonplace in legend, and nothing can be made of the comparison.

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¹ *Berichte der Sächs. Gesellsch. d. Wissenschaften*, 1885, pp. 439 f.

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We are left, therefore, to accept the view that the author who wrote up the *Cārudatta*, and combined with it a new play, thought it well to conceal his identity and to pass off the work under the appellation of a famous king. Lévi’s suggestion that he chose Ṣūdraka for this purpose because he lived after Vikramāditya, patron of Kālidāsa, and wished to give his work the appearance of antiquity by associating it with a prince who preceded Vikramāditya, is clearly far-fetched, and insufficient to suggest a date. Nor can anything be deduced from the plentiful exhibition of Prākṛits, which is not, to judge from Bhāsa, a sign of very early date; while the use of Māhārāṣṭrī Prākṛit would be, if proved, conclusive that he is fairly late. Konow’s effort to support Ṣūdraka’s connexion with Pratiṣṭhāna by this use is clearly untenable.

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There is more plausibility in the argument from the simple form of the construction of the drama; the manner of Bhāsa is closely followed; thus in Act IX the absurd celerity with which the officer of the court obeys the order to bring the mother of Vasantasenā on the scene, and secures the presence of Cārudatta, is precisely on a par with Bhāsa’s management of the plot in his dramas. The scenes of violence, in which Vasantasenā is apparently killed and Cārudatta is led to death, are reminiscent of Bhāsa’s willingness to present such scenes, but they do not depart from the practice of the later drama as in Bhavabhūti’s Mālatīmādhava. The Ṣakāra and Viṭa are indeed figures of the early stage, but they are taken straight from Bhāsa and prove nothing. The position of the Buddhist monk is more interesting, but here again it is borrowed, though developed, and we find Buddhism respected in Kālidāsa and Harṣa. The arguments based on the apparent similarity with the Greek New Comedy are without value for an early date, for they apply, if they have any value at all, to the Cārudatta of Bhāsa. We are left, therefore, with no more than impressions, and these are quite insufficient to assign any date to the clever hand which recast the Cārudatta and made one of the great plays of the Indian drama.¹

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¹ Jacobi (Bhavisattakaha, p. 83) believes in Ṣūdraka as a king, but thinks Kālidāsa older.

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