History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v6.c81.171

v6.c81.171

In the Śākuntala (Act II) the dowager queen (mother of Duṣyanta) sends a message that on the 4th day from the date of the message her fast (vrata) would end¹¹³ The Vikramorvaśīya (III) appears to refer to a vrata called in later times Rohiṇī-candraśayana-vrata (vide Hemādri vol II. pp 599-600) It may be noted that in the above works royal ladies are described as observing vratas In the Raghuvamsa Kālidāsa alludes to an Asidhāra-vrata (XIII. 67) The Mṛcchakatika (Act I) speaks of an upavāsa (a vrata) called Abhirūpapati which appears to have been somewhat like the Bhartṛprāptivrata described by Hemādri (vol I. pp 1199-1200) The Ratnāvalī (Act I at end) describes Madanamahotsava which reminds us of the same described in Hemādri (vol II pp 21-24) It appears, however, that the number of vratas in the first centuries of the Christian era was not very large Gradually, however, the number of vratas increased by leaps and bounds and their total number, as seen from the list furnished at the end of this section, would be in the region of one thousand One of the earliest digests on *tithis* and astrological matters in relation to Dharmaśāstra is the Rājamārtanda of king Bhoja (1st half of 11th century A D ) It mentions only a few vratas (about 24) The next important extant work is the Kṛtyakalpataru of Lakṣmīdhara (1st half of 12th century A D) who mentions in the vratakānda about 175 A comparatively later work viz the Vratakālaviveka of Śūlapāni (1375-1430 A D), which discusses the rules about the proper times for observing vratas, mentions only 11 vratas Hemādri's is the largest published work on vratas, containing as it does about 2200 printed pages in the B I. edition It deals with about 700 vratas. This shows that towards the end of the thirteenth century, when foreign invaders had seized the larger part of India and were ruthlessly razing temples to the ground and converting by force and fraud thousands to their faith, the men of the day, both learned and ignorant, were expending vast intellectual labour and huge sums of money on vratas, pilgrimages and śrāddhas, blissfully ignorant of and blind to the political and religious dangers that engulfed them all.