महावीरचरितम् (महाकवि भवभूति - वीररस-प्रधान रामकथा नाटक सम्पूर्ण ७ अङ्क सटीक)

xxxvii] Bhavabhūti, his Life, and his Date
Padmāvatī described in the Mālatī-Mādhava (as is sometimes done), we must
find some shrine of Lord Kālapriya with reference to which Padmāvatī
may be said to be ‘on the road to the south’, and Mr. Lele suggests¹ that
Kālpi on the Jumna (about fifty miles south-west of Cawnpur) does meet
this requirement. According to this view, the play was first enacted at
the fair at Kālpi (=Kālapriya), and the poet’s family seat, Padmapura
(=Padmāvatī, near Narvār), would indeed have been ‘on the road to the
south’ from Kālpi. The arguments for this view concern 1. the names,
and 2. the preciseness of the description of Padmāvatī. As to the names,
Padmapura and Padmāvatī do indeed mean the same thing, Lotus-ville,
but neither of them is a distinctive name (there are twenty-nine Green-villes
in the United States); and the surface similarity between Kālpi and
Kālapriya is not by itself convincing. As for the argument that Bhava-
bhūti’s description of Padmāvatī could only have been written by one
familiar with the place from birth, it is quite devoid of cogency. His
description of the Daṇḍakā forest would prove just as well that he was
born there also! It proves his keenness of observation, not his birthplace.
Moreover in describing the region of Padmāvatī, Bhavabhūti says:
‘These hills and forests remind me of the Godāvarī and the southern
mountains.’ The word ‘remind’ (smārayanti, M. M. ix. 3²) clearly marks
his acquaintance with Padmāvatī as the later experience and his familiarity
with the south as the earlier one. Pending the discovery of new data,
then, we may assume that Bhavabhūti’s ancestral home, Padmapura, was
in the Berars,² and not near the site of Narvār in Gwalior state.
This would not of course necessarily involve the further assumption,
which it is usual to make, of the identity of the shrine of Lord Kālapriya
with that of Mahākaleśvara of Ujjain. That is possible, but it is better
to leave the question open.
4. Further biographical details.—It would thus seem that, like the
hero in his Mālatī-Mādhava, Bhavabhūti quite early in life left his native
country of the Berars and went to Ujjain in Mālva, or perhaps to Padmā-
vatī, there to complete his studies under his preceptor Jñānanidhi.
Bhavabhūti here not only grounded himself in the various sciences,³ but
also, like his older contemporary or immediate predecessor, Bāṇa,⁴ stood
¹ In his book just cited, pp. 4 b, 84 a.
² Dr. Bhandarkar (in his M.M., 2nd ed., note
to act i, line 31) observes that there are
still many Brahman families in the
region around Chandā who follow the
Taittirīya branch of the Black Yajur
Veda, the branch to which Bhava-
bhūti’s family belonged (above, § 1).
Chandā is in Nagpur, near the border of
the Berars, and not far from the Godāvarī.
³ He likes to show off his knowledge: cp.
Glossary 1, Technical terms from the
three plays.
⁴ Cp. Harsha-charita, p. 47 f, Nir. Sāg. ed.
For the chronological relation cp. below,
§ 8.