The Mauryan Polity c5.s2.t6.1

c5.s2.t6.1

Again the contention that Kauṭalya was indebted to the dramatist Bhāsa from whose *Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa* he has quoted a verse is true. Kauṭalya makes no pretension that the verse in question is his own. He clearly makes us understand that it is a quotation from his statement *apiha ślokau bhavataḥ*. It is difficult to accept the theory that Bhāsa was a later writer and Kauṭalya must have therefore lived after him. The date of Bhāsa has been as much a vexed question as that of Pāṇini or even Kauṭalya. A number of dates ranging from the 6th century B.C. to the 7th century A.D. has been assigned by scholars mostly from imaginative reasoning. The discoverer and the learned editor of Bhāsa’s plays M. M. Gaṇapati Śāstri has, thoroughly and in detail, examined the views of all critics and has come to the conclusion that Bhāsa is pre-Kauṭaliyan. He assigns 5th or 6th century B.C. to Bhāsa basing his arguments on indisputable evidence.¹ This learned view of one Mahāmahopādhyāya is confirmed by the equally learned view of another Mahāmahopādhyāya Haraprasāda Śāstri who accepts without any reserve the priority of Bhāsa to Kauṭalya on different grounds of which two may be cited here. (1) The king of the country mentioned in the *bharatavākya* of every one of Bhāsa’s plays is one of the Nanda dynasty which preceded the Mauryas. (2) Bhāsa belongs to one of the older schools of Dramaturgy, and is unacquainted with the rules laid down in the *Bharata Nāṭya Śāstra* (now published in the Kāvyamālā series. H. P. Śāstri continues: "I have got a curious confirmation of the existence of the dramaturgy in Ancient India in the fact that Kauṭalya has classed Kuśilavas or actors with the Śūdras. Nāṭyaśāstra says that the original Kuśilavas were all Brahmans or better still of divine origin but they ridiculed the Ṛṣis and therefore they were cursed to become Śūdras. So their Śūdra-hood is later than the origin of the drama. As in Cāṇakya’s time they were classed to be Śūdras, we are to infer that at that time drama was an old institution."¹