वासवदत्ता (महाकवि सुबन्धु - श्लेष-प्रधान शास्त्रीय गद्यकाव्य सान्वय सटीक)

INTRODUCTION II as already noted, but Śīlāditya was the very reverse of a cruel monarch (Smith, Early History of India from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, 2 ed., p. 306, Oxford, 1908). If one were to stress the theory of rivalry both in letters and in war, one might suppose that Subandhu was a courtier either of Śaśāṅka of Gauḍa or of Dēvagupta of Eastern Mālava (cf. Ettinghausen, op. cit. pp. 36–38, 148), both of whom were ignoble in character. But of this there is not the slightest evidence ; and even if the name of the father of either of them was Vikramāditya (a most impro- bable hypothesis), that would give little point to Subandhu's stanza, which plainly alludes to the famous Vikramāditya, and is, therefore, only a conventional harking back to happy times long past. In determining the date of the Vāsavadattā I am forced to consider the lines under discussion as utterly valueless. While the sole known basis for assigning a terminus a quo to the composition of Subandhu's romance is, as we have seen, the allusion to Uddyōtakara, who probably flourished in the latter half of the sixth century, the terminus ad quem is almost cer- tainly the date of Bāṇa's Harṣacarita. This romance, which was left unfinished by its author, ends abruptly with the rescue of Rājyaśrī, the sister of Harṣavardhana and widow of Graha- varman (i. e. 607, or 606), though Harṣa had reigned several years when Bāṇa wrote (Harṣacarita, tr. Cowell and Thomas, pp. 75–76, London, 1897). The precise date of composition of Bāṇa's second romance, the Kādambarī, is unknown; but, as Bāṇa died before completing it (Kādambarī, tr. Ridding, p. 182, London, 1896), it must have been written considerably after the Harṣacarita. It may also be regarded as certain that Subandhu lived later, probably by at least a century (cf. p. 12), than Daṇḍin, the author of the picaresque Daśakumāracarita (Weber, Indische Streifen, 1. 311–315, 353, 372, Berlin, 1868 ; Daśakumāracarita, tr. Meyer, pp. 120–127, Leipzig, 1902 ; Collins, The Geographical Data of the Raghuvamśa and Daśakumāracarita, p. 46, Leipzig, 1907, places Daṇḍin's literary activity before 585 A. D.). The Place of Composition of the Vāsavadattā. The question next arises as to the place of composition of the Vāsavadattā.