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

14 VĀSAVADATTĀ ‹the end of their rosaries›, accepting «seats of kuśa-grass», and «girt with their girdles».' The distich was not, however, written by Subandhu, but by Trivikrama Bhaṭṭa, the author of the Damayantīkathā, or Nalacampū (1. 7; cf. Böhtlingk, Indische Sprüche, 2 ed., No. 52, St. Petersburg, 1870–1873), who flourished about 915 A.D. (Duff, Chronology of India, p. 85, Westminster, 1899).¹ The Vāsavadattā a Kathā. The Vāsavadattā is expressly stated by many manuscripts (cf. Hall’s ed., p. 300, note 7, and Śivarāma ad loc.) to be an ākhyāyikā, or ‘tale,’ this being very possibly influenced by the reference to some work entitled, from the name of its heroine, vāsavadattākhyāyikā in the Vārttika on Pāṇini 4. 3. 87 (cf. also the Vārttika on 4. 2. 60, and see Krishnamachariar, Introd., pp. 36–37). The ākhyāyikā, according to Sanskrit rhetoricians (cf. Regnaud, Rhétorique sanskrite, pp. 76– 77, Paris, 1884), is a division of gadya, or poetical prose; and the classical example is the Harṣacarita of Bāṇa, who himself seems to intimate that the Vāsavadattā likewise belongs to this cate- gory by using the term ākhyāyikākārā, ‘authors of ākhyāyikās,’ immediately before his allusion to Subandhu’s romance, in the tenth stanza of his introduction to the Harṣacarita. The classic description of the ākhyāyikā is given in the following passage of the Sāhityadarpaṇa (ed. Roer, No. 568, Calcutta, 1851): ākhyāyikā kathāvat syāt kavēr vaṁśādikīrtanam asyāṁ anyakavīnāṁ ca vṛttaṁ gadyaṁ kvacit kvacit kathāṁśānāṁ vyavacchēda āśvāsa iti badhyatē āryāvaktrapavaktrāṇāṁ chandasā yēna kēnacit anyāpadēśēnā ’’śvāsamukhē bhāvyarthasūcanam, ‘the ākhyāyikā should be as the kathā. (There should be) in it an account of the lineage of the poet and of other poets; poetry ¹ Krishnamachariar (Introd., pp. 39-40) calls attention to a number of passages in the Nalacampū (ed. Bombay, 1885; new ed., 1903) in which he holds that Trivikrama Bhaṭṭa imitated Subandhu. He likewise notes parallels between the Vāsavadattā and the Jīvandharacampū of Haricandra (p. 52), who wrote after 897 A.D. (p. 44), Śiśupālavadha (p. 53), Rāmāyaṇa (p. 64), Mēghadūta (p. 54), Vikramōrvaśī (pp. 62, 64), and Mālatīmādhava (pp. 61–62), as well as the Harṣacarita (pp. 53–57), and Kādambarī (pp. 52, 53, 55, 57, 63).