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

14 VĀSAVADATTĀ
‹the end of their rosaries›, accepting «seats of kuśa-grass», and
«girt with their girdles».' The distich was not, however,
written by Subandhu, but by Trivikrama Bhaṭṭa, the author of
the Damayantīkathā, or Nalacampū (1. 7; cf. Böhtlingk, Indische
Sprüche, 2 ed., No. 52, St. Petersburg, 1870–1873), who flourished
about 915 A.D. (Duff, Chronology of India, p. 85, Westminster,
1899).¹
The Vāsavadattā a Kathā. The Vāsavadattā is expressly
stated by many manuscripts (cf. Hall’s ed., p. 300, note 7, and
Śivarāma ad loc.) to be an ākhyāyikā, or ‘tale,’ this being very
possibly influenced by the reference to some work entitled, from
the name of its heroine, vāsavadattākhyāyikā in the Vārttika
on Pāṇini 4. 3. 87 (cf. also the Vārttika on 4. 2. 60, and see
Krishnamachariar, Introd., pp. 36–37). The ākhyāyikā, according
to Sanskrit rhetoricians (cf. Regnaud, Rhétorique sanskrite, pp. 76–
77, Paris, 1884), is a division of gadya, or poetical prose; and the
classical example is the Harṣacarita of Bāṇa, who himself seems
to intimate that the Vāsavadattā likewise belongs to this cate-
gory by using the term ākhyāyikākārā, ‘authors of ākhyāyikās,’
immediately before his allusion to Subandhu’s romance, in the
tenth stanza of his introduction to the Harṣacarita. The classic
description of the ākhyāyikā is given in the following passage of
the Sāhityadarpaṇa (ed. Roer, No. 568, Calcutta, 1851):
ākhyāyikā kathāvat syāt kavēr vaṁśādikīrtanam
asyāṁ anyakavīnāṁ ca vṛttaṁ gadyaṁ kvacit kvacit
kathāṁśānāṁ vyavacchēda āśvāsa iti badhyatē
āryāvaktrapavaktrāṇāṁ chandasā yēna kēnacit
anyāpadēśēnā ’’śvāsamukhē bhāvyarthasūcanam,
‘the ākhyāyikā should be as the kathā. (There should be) in it
an account of the lineage of the poet and of other poets; poetry
¹ Krishnamachariar (Introd., pp. 39-40) calls attention to a number of passages in
the Nalacampū (ed. Bombay, 1885; new ed., 1903) in which he holds that Trivikrama
Bhaṭṭa imitated Subandhu. He likewise notes parallels between the Vāsavadattā and
the Jīvandharacampū of Haricandra (p. 52), who wrote after 897 A.D. (p. 44),
Śiśupālavadha (p. 53), Rāmāyaṇa (p. 64), Mēghadūta (p. 54), Vikramōrvaśī (pp. 62,
64), and Mālatīmādhava (pp. 61–62), as well as the Harṣacarita (pp. 53–57), and
Kādambarī (pp. 52, 53, 55, 57, 63).