नाट्यशास्त्रम् (प्रथम भाग - अभिनवभारती एवं हिन्दी टीका सहित)

LXXXIV

the yuvarāja or crown-prince (I. Ant. Vol. XXXIII. pp. 163f). Though MM.P.V. Kane (Introduction to the SD. p. viii) has differed from him, Lévi's argument does not seem to be without its force. It may not be considered unusual for common persons who are intimate with him to show the future king an exaggerated honour by calling him svāmin a term to be formally applied to the reigning monarch only. Besides the argument put forward by Lévi, there may be collected from the inscriptions other facts too which may incline us to take 200-300 A.C. as the time of the compilation of the Nāṭyaśāstra. These are as follows :

(a) The word gāndharva probably in the sense in which the Nāṭyaśāstra uses it (XXXVI. 76) occurs in the Junagarh Rock inscription of Rudradaman, I (150 A.C.). This also mentions terms, like sauṣṭhava and niyuddha which we meet in the Nāṭyaśāstra probably in the same sense (Junagarh Inscription of Rudradaman I. See Select Inscriptions, pp. 172-173).

(b) The respect for 'Cows and Brahmins' (go-brāhmaṇa) which the author of the Nāṭyaśāstra shows at the end of his work (XXXVI. 77) has its parallel in the inscription referred to above. And respect for Brahmins also finds expression in more than one inscription belonging to the 3rd century A.C. (op. cit. pp. 159, 161, 165)

(c) The three tribal names Śaka, Yavana, and Pahlava appearing in the inscription of Vasisṭiputra Pulomayi (149 A.C.) occur in the same order in the Nāṭyaśāstra (op. cit., p. 197,) and NŚ.

The cumulative effect of all these data seems to be that they may enable us to place the Nāṭyaśāstra about 200 A.C., the time of these inscriptions.

6. The Natyasastra earlier than Bhasa

Lack of conformity to the dramaturgic rules of the Nāṭyaśāstra has sometimes been cited as an evidence of the antiquity of Bhāsa, the argument being that as he wrote before the rules were formulated, he could not observe them. This view however, seems to be mistaken. For the rules occurring in the Nāṭyaśāstra cannot, for obvious reasons, be the author's fabrication without relation to any pre-existent literature.¹ If the Nāṭyaśāstra was written after Bhāsa's plays, its rules had every chance of having been a generalisation from them as well as from numerous other dramatic works existing at the time, while the contrary being the case (i.e. Bhāsa being later than the Nāṭyaśāstra) some novelties are likely to be

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¹ F. Hall in his Introduction (p. 12) to the Daśarūpa says : At all events, he (Bharata) would hardly have elaborated them (the rules) except as inductions, from actual compositions.