son also suggests that our author was probably not a native of Southern India,* and he bases this suggestion on the simile which occurs at p. 129 infraवलिताक्षराणि, viz. pearis spotless like snow |. A similar idea occurred to me, with reference to the last stanza of our play on noticing in General Cunningham's Reports on the Archäeological Survey of India how frequently temples and remains connected with the Varâha Avatâra are to be met within Northern India. I But both circumstances appear to me to be capable of such obvious explanations, on other hypotheses, that even this little bit of inferentially derived knowledge regarding Viśâkhadatta must be treated as still in need of corroboration.
Regarding the date of the work, our information hitherto has been, I am afraid, almost equally scanty and equally unsatisfactory. Professor Wilson, relying upon two passages in the drama, deducted the conclusion, that it was composed in the 11th or 12th century of the Christian era, "when the Pathan princes were pressing upon the Hindu sovereignties." One of these passages is that in which reference is made to the Mlechchhas, a name which Professor Wilson understands to refer to the Muhammadans. The second passage is the stanza at the beginning of the fifth Act, on which Professor Wilson observes as follows:- This metaphorical style is not natural to the compositions of the period to which the drama belongs; the Hindus were, perhaps, beginning to borrow it from their neighbours."॥ The opinion thus propounded by Professor Wilson has, as usual in such cases, been not only accepted by subsequent inquirers, but has itself been made the basis, to a greater or less extent, of further speculation. Thus, in the Reports of the Archæological Survey of India, a change in the course of the river S'ona being the subject of enquiry, it is stated to have occurred "shortly before or at the period of the great Muhammadan invasions, when the author of the Mudrârâkshasa, flourished."$$ Now this might have been a thoroughly legitimate
* Ibid, p. 182, note, + Our text has not kept this reading, which occurs only in two of our eight MSS.
- See the references given in our note on the passage, but see, too,
inter alia Burgess's Arch. Sury. Report, Vol. I., pp. 7, 22, 26; Vol. IV., p. 15; Vol. Y., pp. 30-52. and see p. 21. infra. $Hindu Theatre, II, p. 251, note. &Ibid, p. 128. &Ibid, p. 218. $ See Cunningham's Arch. Surv., Vol. VIII., p. 22, and Journal As. Soc. of · Beng., Vol. XIV., p. 140; Cf. also Indian Antiquary, Vol. II., p. 145, and Vol. VI., p. 114, note of Schwanbeck,2
