The History of Indian Literature c9.64

c9.64

With respect, now, to the surviving dramas, it has hitherto been usual to follow what is supposed to be the tradition, and to assign the most ancient of them, the Mṛichhakaṭí and Kálidása’s pieces, to the first century b.c.; while the pieces next following—those of Bhavabhúti—belong to a time so late as the eighth century a.d. Between Kálidása and Bhavabhúti there would thus be a gap of some eight or nine centuries—a period from which, according to this view, not one single work of this class has come down to us. Now this is in itself in the highest degree improbable; and were it so, then surely at the very least there ought to be discernible in the dramas of the younger epoch a very different spirit, a very different manner of treatment, from that exhibited in their predecessors of an age eight or nine hundred years earlier.[^asterisk] But this is by no means the case; and thus we are compelled at once to reject this pretended tradition, and to refer those *soi-disant* older pieces to pretty much the same period as those of Bhavabhúti. Moreover, when we come to examine the matter more closely, we find that, so far as Kálidása is concerned, Indian tradition does not really furnish any ground whatever for the view hitherto accepted: we only find that the tradition has been radically misused. The tradition is to the effect that Kálidása lived at the court of Vikramáditya, and it is contained in a memorial verse which says that Dhanvantari, Kshapaṇaka, Amarasiṅha, Śaṅku, Vetálabhaṭṭa, Ghaṭakarpara, Kálidása, Varáhamihira, and Vararuchidagger were the ‘nine gems’ of Vikrama’s