पृष्ठम्:व्यक्तिविवेकः (राजानकरुय्यककृतव्याख्यासहितः).pdf/१२

CommurdLTToulimaye turmetroviamgewwwrity intered MORS 10 cannot be earlier than Bhoja, and I am of opinion that he must have been a contemporary of Bhoja, inasmuch as it would be more natural to interpret the passage “भोजनृपतेस्तत्त्याग- लीलायितम्" as referring to the munificence of a ruling king under whose patrronage the author and his brothers flourished. On this suppositon there would be nothing incomsistent in the tradition that Kayyata and Uvvata were the younger brothers of Mammata, and that all the three brothers were contemporaries of Bhoja. In fact, Uvvata himself has, in his commentary on the Vajasaney1-Samhitar, clearly started that he wrote the work while Bhoja was reigning (भोजे राज्य प्रशा- सति). In the face of such an explicit admission on the part of Uvvata, it is hard to disbeheve the tradition about the brothers and assign them to different periods. Following Bhimasena, therefore, I would place Mammata in the first half of the eleventh century. Coming back to Mahima-Bhatta, we thus see that he must be placed between Abhinavaguptapada and Mammata. No doubt the date I would assign to him makes him contem- poraneous almost with the former, the passage in the Vyakti- viveka where Abhinavaguptapada is criticized supports me, as the wording there suggests that Mahima-Bhatta Is referring to a living rhetorician of a rival school of thought (कोचिद्विद्वन्मानिनः यदाहु तद्भान्तिमूलम् ). For these reasons I am Induced to arrange the periods of the literary activity of these rhetoricians thus - (1) Abhinavagupta-the last decade of the tenth cen- tury. (2) Mahima-Bhattar --early part of the eleventh cen- tury (3) Mammata-middle of the eleventh century. Further, if we accept these dates as accurate, we shall be allowing the necessary inter val for the several commen- taries on the Kavyaprakasa which sprang up in the twelfth century A. D., such as Ruyyaka's (1129-1150) and Manikvan chandra's (about 1160 A D.}.