MARCH, 1873.]
THE DATE OF SRI HARSHA.
tion from the Naishadhiya may exist; and yet,
from the name of the author of the stanza quoted notbeing there mentioned, Dr. Aufrecht may have been unable to recognise its origin.
And to this
circumstance I am inclined to attach particular weight, because Dr. Aufrecht, unless I misunder stand him, has in one part of his catalogue cited the words—
73
read in the Prasanna Rāghava. If this be so, we may have some clue to the age of the Gâta Govinda.”f This observation of Dr. Hall's, it will be remarked, is not very positive. Pro fessor Weber, however, who repeats it, is some what less cautious. Speaking of the Prasanna Rāghava, he says:—“According to Hall (Preface to the Dasaripa, p. 36), a verse from this drama
aſſfäräläfaaſaïſºſoqāſāHFTſvääIII+:*
is quoted in Dhanika, and it must therefore be
apparently without recollecting that they form part of the sixteenth stanza of the first canto of Kãlidasa's Kumārasambhava. Having said this much, I have only to add that if it should
If these remarks had been correct, we should probably have been able to add something valuable to our materials for inquiry in the
placed before the middle of the tenth century.”f
present matter. For in the introduction to this turn out that the quotation does occur in the Oxford M.S. of the Saraswati Kanthābharana,
Dr. Bühler's conjecture will lose much of its value. And if the question, as it will then be, is reduced to one of the comparative probability of the quotation from Sri Harsha being inter polated, and of Rājasekhara's account being
excellent drama—a printed copy of which I have recently obtained from Calcutta—a certain Harsha is mentioned as the delight of the poetical muse; and this Harsha, as I am inclined to believe on various grounds, is more probably the Harsha of the Naishadhiya than the Harsha whose name is connected with the two
erroneous, many will, I think, be inclined to hold
dramas of Nāgānanda and Ratnāvali.S. that it is, at all events, safer to trust to the fact of the quotation, than to any opinion about the accuracy of a Jaina biographer. It is only proper that I should add a remark here about Dr. Bühler's identification of the
Jayantachandra mentioned by Rājasekhara as the king in whose reign Sri Harsha flourish ed, with the king Jayachandra who is known to history. When I first read the abstract
How
ever that may be, I think there must have been
some mistake in the information received by Dr. Hall.
For first, I think, the stanza itself
alludes to an event which cannot possibly be alluded to by any character in a play on any part of Rāma's history, except by a gross anachro nism.
The stanza runs as follows:—
Wit TT gr: {{#if:{# ſh;3 Higſfärſät gr: Il
Antiquary, I remarked that the learned Doctor's
- Högå fårtizaſ Hūſā Hāfāt aſſi: ||
- Tā'ī ā’Iſāqi ſãHſi-Tääſ gºſqā II
argument proceeded upon the “assumption'
- F# HFrääſſº it ſhifāgārāºgza II
of Dr. Bühler's paper given in the Indian
that that identification was correct. Now that I have read in eactenso the grounds on which Dr. Bühler arrives at that conclusion,
The sense is not quite complete here, but it may be thus freely rendered : —
“He who gradually folded up his own big
I must say that the reasoning appears to me—I will not say conclusive, but certainly very
story of the lord of Subhadrā (i.e., Arjuna) in
cogent, and the “assumption' of the identity has
the Himalaya Mountain, namely—
surely very good warrant. I now proceed to another point.
as usual, bristles with the most varied items of information, Dr. FitzEdward Hall says:—
“Look at this spot in front of you; Here, of old, Mahādeva, who had become a Kirāta in sport, was hit hard on the crest by Kirițin (i.e., Arjuna) with his bow.” Now this clearly refers to the story of the
“At the foot of page 71 begins a stanza which
reneontre between Śiva and Arjuna, an event
an intelligent pandit assures me [he] has
which was yet in the womb of futurity, while
- Page 110 b.
f Indian Antiquary, vol. I. p. 257. The stanza (p. 9, Calcutta edition, Pändit newspaper for 1867) is set out Aufrecht's Catalogue in the section on
Righava Nātaka, p. 142. It is remarkable that the ame of Bhavabhūti, the poet of whom the Prasanna Rāghava most often reminds one, has no place in this list. But I do not think any conclusion can be safely based on this
In the
preface to his edition of the Dasarápaka, which,
Page 36. and , p. 129 of in full in Dr. the Prasanna
arms into a circle, on hearing this wonderful
fact.