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

INTRODUCTION 13
Data Concerning Subandhu’s Life. Our knowledge of
Subandhu is most meagre. In the thirteenth stanza of his intro-
duction to the Vāsavadattā he terms himself sujanāikabandhu,
which Hall (Introd., p. 24), following the commentator, Śivarāma,
renders ‘an intimate of none but the virtuous,’ although the word
should rather be translated ‘Sujana’s only brother.’¹ The
tradition that Subandhu was the nephew of the Prakrit
grammarian, Vararuci, has already been mentioned (see above,
p. 6), though with disapproval; and there seems also to have
been a legend that he was, by birth, a Kashmirian Brāhman
(Weber, Indische Streifen, 1. 371, Berlin, 1868, quoting Cunning-
ham, in JASBe. 17. 98–99).²
Subandhu is not known to have written anything besides the
Vāsavadattā. Citations are made from him in the Śārṅga-
dharapaddhati, Subhāṣitāvalī, Padyāvalī, and Sūktikarṇāmṛta
(Aufrecht, Catalogus Catalogorum, 1. 726, Leipzig, 1891); but
the quotations in the first two anthologies, which alone are thus
far edited [by Peterson (Bombay, 1888) and by Peterson and
Durgāprasāda (Bombay, 1886), respectively], are drawn exclu-
sively from the Vāsavadattā. Hall (Introd., p. 48, note), it is
true, found in the still unedited Padyaveṇī of Veṇīdatta, com-
piled about the reign of Shāh Jahān (early 17th century), the fol-
lowing distich then supposed to have been written by Subandhu:
akṣamālāpavṛttijñā kuśāsanaparigrahā
brāhmī "va dāurjanī saṃsad vandanīyā samēkhalā,
‘an assembly of scoundrels, knowing ‹how to live by disparaging
speeches›, accepting «evil teachings», and «wicked to the just»,
should be honoured even as an assembly of Brāhmans knowing
¹ Cartellieri, ‘Das Mahābhārata bei Subandhu und Bāṇa,’ in WZKM. 13. 72, trans-
lates the stanza thus: ‘Durch eine Gnadengabe, die Sarasvatī ihm verliehen, hat
Subandhu — d. h. der edle Freunde hat — dieses Buch gemacht; obzwar Subandhu —
d. h. der hundert Freunde hat — hat er doch nur den Edlen zum einzigen Freund;
eine wahre Schatzkammer ist er in der Kunst, Silbe für Silbe doppelsinnige Dicht-
ungen zu verfertigen.’ On Sujana as a proper name see Aufrecht, op. cit. 3. 149,
Leipzig, 1903.
² It is interesting to note, in this connexion, that Krishnamachariar holds that
Subandhu was a Vāiṣṇavite and an adherent of the Mīmāṃsā philosophy (Introd.,
pp. 23, 28).