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.