नाट्यशास्त्रम् (प्रथम भाग - अभिनवभारती एवं हिन्दी टीका सहित)

LXXXVI

it may be placed in the 2nd centuary A. C. i.e. one century before the time generally assigned to Bhāsa's works. (Jolly, Introduction to AŚ. p. 10, but according to Konow Bhāsa's date may be the 2nd century A. C. See ID. p. 51).

From the foregoing discussions it may be reasonable to assume the existence of the Nāṭyaśāstra in the 2nd centuary A.C., though it must not be supposed that the work remained uninterfered with by interpolators of later ages. Such an interpolation may exist more or less in all the ancient texts. For example, Aristotle's Poetics too, in its received text, has been suspected to have interpolated passages in it. There are indeed interpolated passages in the Nāṭyaśāstra and some of these have been pointed out¹ and a few more may by some chance be discovered afterwards. But this may not bring down the work as a whole to later times.

---

¹ See notes on XVIII. 6, 48; XX. 63. Besides these cases, the seventeen couplets after XV. 101 and the five couplets after XVI 169 are spurious. For these do not give any important information regarding the art of the theatre or dramaturgy and may be merely scholastic additions. The passage on pravṛttis XIV. 36-55 may also be spurious.