brought against the drama. For it is difficult to see why Professor Wilson thought that the alleged " degenerate manners" of the play suited the tenth or eleventh, or even a later century, any more than say the sixth or seventh, or any other century before or after the age which he so arbitrarily assigns to the genesis of the drama. The fact seems to be that the allegation is as little founded as the inference that is made to rest upon it.
The principal object, however, which I have in view here is not to examine the pros and cons of the antiquity of the drama, but the question whether it belongs to the renowned author of the Śâkuntala and the Vikramorvaśî. If a successful attempt is made to answer this question, the more general question of the age of Kalidasa may be left to be investigated else where more appropriately.
Now, what are the means by which we can hope to prove that an extant work, the age of whose genesis is long gone by, belongs to a certain author? We have, I think,to consider the external as well the internal evidence relating to the work in question. But if the work is several centuries old, external evidence as regards such a composition is reduced merely to the form of tradition, written and oral. Oral tradition, perhaps, if it is several centuries old, loses a great deal, in fact, almost the whole of its claim to be regarded as satisfactory evidence. But if there is a written tradition, and this tradition is written in the words of the author himself,
