xvi PREFACE
as in his epics he normally avoids the pedestrian traits which are easily to be found in the epics of his forerunner Acvaghosa. The dramatic defects of Bhasa need not be ascribed to actors, for Kalidasa himself in any version of even the Qakimtala is far from perfect, and Shakespeare's flaws are notorious. On the other hand, we owe a very considerable debt to Hermann Weller 1 for showing in detail, with true insight into the nature of Bhasa's poetic talent, 2 that six of the stanzas which by the anthologies are attributed to Bhasa bear remarkable resemblance to the style ol stanzas in our dramas. We may dismiss as far-fetched the suggestion that the makers of anthologies ascribed them to him because they felt in them the spirit of his poetry; it is common sense to assume that the ascriptions are correct, and that they add one more link to the chain of evidence which ascribes the dramas to Bhasa, and vindicates the suggestion of a great Indian scholar. The effort 3 to strengthen the case for dating Dandin later than Bhamaha by using the evidence of the Avantisundarikatha and its Sara is clearly a complete mistake. The Katha should never have been published from one mutilated manuscript, whose readings, even if correctly stated, have already been proved wrong by other manuscript evidence. 4 Even, however, from the muti- lated text it was clear that Bharavi was not made out to be the great-grandfather of Dandin, who is given as Damodara. But, as Dr. D6 B has pointed. out, even the most careless reader of the Katha and the Dafakitmaracarita should have been struck by the extraordinary difference of style between the two works, the Katha rivalling unsuccessfully the worst mannerisms of the Har- sacarita and the Kadambari. If a Dandin wrote the work, he was assuredly not the author of the Dagakumaracarita, and its date may be centuries later than the great Dandin, for there is no reason to accept the suggestion 6 that the writer of the Katha lived sufficiently soon after the famous Dandin to be familiar
' Festgabe Jacobi, pp. 114-25.
3 Cf. Garbe's emphatic testimony, Festgabe Jacobi, p. 1 26, in contrast with ZII ii 250; ABA. viii. 17 ff.
8 J. Nobel, ZII. v. 136-52.
4 G. Harihar Sastri, IHQ. iii. 169-71.
6 IHQ. iii. 395 ff. As Dandin wrote according to Bhoja's Qrngaraprakafa (BSOS. iii. 282) a Dvisamdhanakavya, this may be his third work (cf. below, p. 296). « Ibid., p. 403.
