17. The Dramas of Bhasa: A literary study. 



By A. M. Meerwarth. 



The following is a lecture delivered by the author in the 

 rooms of the Asiatic Society of Bengal on the 6th July, 1917. 

 It is an attempt to show some prominent literary features of a 

 collection of dramas edited recently in the Trivandrum Sanskrit 

 Series and attributed by their editor to Bhasa, a famous 



dramatist anterior to Kalidasa. 



Seven y< rs ago Mr. Ganapati Sastri, the learned editor of 

 the Trivandrum Sanskrit Series, discovered in Travancore a 

 palm-leaf manuscript containing ten dramas. Two more 

 dramas were found on another manuscript, also in Travancore. 

 Systematic researches yielded more material, and finally the 

 lucky discoverer saw his pains rewarded by a series of ^ manu- 

 scripts containing thirteen dramas not known before. No indi- 

 cation was, how ever, given in the works as to the name of their 

 author Mr. Ganapati Sastri undertook therefore the difficult 

 task to collect all the evidence available— unfortunately it is 

 verv scanty— and to come to a conclusion as to the author and 

 the historical period of the dramas. His conclusions are : 

 (1) The thirteen dramas have been composed by one and the 

 same author ; (2) this author is Bhasa, whom Kalidasa himseit 

 calls a famous ancient poet ; <3) this author lived at a very 

 early period, at any rate before Buddha. 



If I speak in this lecture about the dramas of Bhasa, 1 do 

 so only for convenience's sake: it does not mean that 1 share 

 the learned Sastri's opinion. The time has not yet come to 

 give a final answer to the questions about the author or the 

 authors. Only so much can be said with absolute certainty, 

 that the dramas are later than Buddha, as Buddhist monks 

 play a part in t hem and are quoted several times, it is. now - 

 ever, not my intention to discuss these intricate problems in a 

 popular loct ure. I wish to draw the attention of non-Sanscr t - 

 ists to an unknown ancient poet of first magnitude and discus- 

 sions of the Shakespeare-Baconian type have a fatal tendency to 

 kill the interest in the subject. Let me therefore aequo .mt >o 

 with some of these masterpieces and point out their mam 



characteristics. , . . . „, frnm 



The subject-matter of our dramas has been taken J™* 

 various sources. Two are what we may call historical plays. 

 Their titles are " rratijnayaugandharayanam or *;«g* n - 

 dharayana who is true to his promise, and Svapna vasava- 



dattam" or Vasavadatta, the dream-appantion Jt , 1S ^. 



they do not relate incidents of which we have any historical 



