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

INTRODUCTION

Title. The title of the Vāsavadattā of Subandhu, the oldest
romantic novel in India, seems to be derived from that of a long
lost drama by Bhāsa,¹ the Svapnavāsavadattā, or ‘Dream-Vāsa-
vadattā’ (for compounds of this type cf. Wackernagel, Altindische
Grammatik, 2. 1. 244–245, 250–253, Göttingen, 1905). The
dream as a novelistic device in India first occurs in Subandhu
(see below, p. 28); though in the drama it is found in the first
act of the Viddhaśālabhañjikā and the third of the Karpūrama-
ñjarī (both written by Rājaśēkhara, who was acquainted with
Bhāsa’s work), as well as in the first of Viśvanāthabhaṭṭa’s
Śr̥ṅgāravāṭikā (Catalogue of the Sanskrit Manuscripts in the
Library of the India Office, 7, 1618, London, 1904). In the fifth
act of Bhāsa’s Svapnavāsavadattā the hero, King Vatsarāja,
sleeping, dreams of his love Vāsavadattā, who enters, disguised
as an attendant of the queen, but who, he thinks, has been
burned to death at Lāvānaka (cf. svapnavāsavadattasya dāhakō,
‘the conflagration of the “Dream-Vāsavadattā”’ [Rājaśēkhara,
cited in the Sūktimuktāvalī (see Peterson and Durgāprasāda,
Subhāṣitāvali of Vallabhadēva, Introd., p. 81, Bombay, 1886)],
and Bhāsa’s epithet jalaṇamitta, ‘friend of fire,’ in Gaüḍavaha,
v. 800), this being employed both in the famous fire-scene in the
fourth act of the Ratnāvalī (first half of the seventh century)
and in the Tāpasavatsarāja (before the second half of the ninth
century; see the analysis by Hultzsch, in Nachrichten von der
königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, 1886,
pp. 224–241). Not only was the fire-scene thus borrowed from
Bhāsa by later dramatists, but from him, it may be conjectured,
came, at least in literary form, the entire story of Vāsavadattā
and Udayana, or Vatsarāja, as given in the Ratnāvalī, Priya-

---

¹ On Bhāsa, see, in general, Hall, ‘Fragments of Three Early Hindu Dramatists,’
in JASBe. 28. 28–29; Lévi, Théâtre indien, 1. 157–160, 2. 31–32, Paris, 1890.
B