पृष्ठम्:वेणीसंहारम् (आङ्गलटिप्पणीसहितम्).pdf/३

पुटमेतत् सुपुष्टितम्

INTRODUCTION.


 All that the play itself tells us about its author is that he is Mŗigarājalakshman Bhatta Nārāyana; and since the name is mentioned in the prelude just in the fashion we might expect on the analogy of other Sanskrit plays, it is but reasonable not to doubt the authenticity of that name. Who this Bhatta Nārāyaņa was, and about what time in the history of Sanskrit literature he lived and wrote are questions requiring investigation and solution.

 Bhatta Nārāyaņa is not one of those authors whose dates have been established with certainty directly, or indirectly by a synthesis of such scraps of information as are derived from inscriptions and coins or other reliable sources such as accounts of contemporary events or events of immediate past, written by foreign or Indian chroniclers known to sober history. The only sources of information in his case are a body of tradition preserved in Bengal in what is called the Vangarāja Ghataka, which is, after all, of recent origin and not very trustworthy, and certain lists of Bengal kings which, whatever their value may be so far as they go, yield very meagre information about the period with which Batta Nārāyaņa's name is associated, bound up with that of a ruler known to tradition by the name of Adisur. Various attempts have been made, on the one hand, to identify the Bhatta Nārāyaņa of the Veņisamhārā and the Bhatta Nārāyaņa of the half-mythical story, and, on the other hand, to determine who this Adisur was, and when and over which part of Bengal he ruled. After going through the whole mass of facts and arguments marshalled by critics in this connection, one cannot help feeling that the whole question is still left much in the domain of mere conjecture and nothing is decided with anything like certainty. But so much may be said in favour of those attempts that, putting all the results together, it is possible to obtain some conclusions which surely have an air of probability about them and need not be rejected in the absence of any trustworthy evidence to the contrary.