History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v1.c6.s60.18

v1.c6.s60.18

The date of Bhavadeva can be approximately settled to be about 1100 A. D. as he is quoted by Hemādri, the Vivādacandra of Misaru and the Smṛtisāra of Harinātha. He is certainly earlier than 1200 A. D. A period of at least half a century must have elapsed before a Bengal writer like Bhavadeva came to be looked upon as an authority on mīmāṁsā by Hemādri who wrote in distant Berar. It appears that he was quoted in the Karmopadeśinī of Aniruddha (I. O. cat. No. 1853, p. 474). But that Ms. is bound up with another work by a later author and the reference in the cat. is not quite clear. If we rely on the Vīramitrodaya, a work called Pradīpa criticised the views of Bhavadeva on the verse of Yāj. II. 24 (about adverse possession for 20 and 10 years). Bhavadeva held that twenty years’ enjoyment of immovable property by a stranger implied that the real owner meant to abandon it for the benefit of the stranger enjoying it, that such abandonment for the enjoyment of another leads to the inference of the extinction of previous ownership and that the property being abandoned by the owner in favour of the stranger who takes hold of it, ownership also (of the stranger) arises. The Pradīpa⁶⁸⁹ points out that it does not invariably follow that, because a srranger is allowed to enjoy land, the owner intends to abandon the land for the stranger, nor is it an invariable rule that what is abandoned for another becomes the property of that other. It will be shown later on that the Pradīpa must have been composed before 1150 A. D. Hence it follows that Bhavadeva flourished about 1100. He cannot be very much earlier than that, as he is not mentioned by any writer of the 11th century and as he not only mentions Kumārila and Prabhākara, but also writers who criticised Prabhākara's views.