प्रियदर्शिका नाटिका (सम्राट हर्षवर्धन - चतुरङ्क शास्त्रीय नाटिका सान्वय सटीक)

XIX to different countries. So this argument of similar ideas, and of similar grammatical and literary peculiarities is not sound, especially when we find that the style of Bhāsa is widely differ- ent from the style of Priyadarśikā and its sister plays. The style of Bhāsa is crude and is not elegant or graceful; while the style of Ratnāvalī and its sister plays is refined and graceful. The plays of Bhāsa evidently belong to a more distant age. The similarity of ideas &c. can be explained on the ground that the author of Ratnāvalī and the two plays might have read Bhāsa's plays, as he did Kālidāsa's also, and tried to imitate him in certain points. So this theory about Bhāsa's authorship of the three plays in question, is also untenable. See also our Introd. to the Ratnāvalī. We have thus disposed of all the theories about the authorship of the three plays, Priyadarśikā, Ratnāvalī, and Nāgānand. We have also examined the internal as well as the external evidence that is available to us and we are led to the irresistible conclusion that Shri Harsha of Kanauj, who reigned from 606–648 A. D., is the author of Ratnāvalī and the other two plays. (3) HARSHA AS A POET AND DRAMATIST. Harsha's merits as a poet and dramatist are certainly great. But he can be placed only in the second class among Sanskrit authors. Like many other playwrights he does not show originality in the invention of the plots of his dramas nor great skill or delicacy in the portraiture of character. But he shows considerable skill in the creation of incidents and situations necessary for dramatic effect.* He has neither the imagination, the fancy and the grace of Kālidāsa, nor Bhavabhūti's loftiness of thought and depth and force of passion. As a dramatic artist and master of the language also he is inferior to either of them. But he has the great merit of simplicity of expression and thought. His style is free from the artificiality, overstraining of words, exaggeration of thought and sentiment, which characterise later Sanskrit literature. His Sanskrit is elegant and precise and his use of figures of speech and thought, is on the whole restrained and in good taste. Coming as he does after Kālidāsa

• See infra. our remarks on the source of the plot