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On the Date of the Subhasitavali

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

Peterson, in his edition of the Subhāṣitâvali, wrote in 1886: “Of the compiler [of the anthology] all we can say is that he cannot have flourished before Jainollābhadīna [i.e. Zain ul-'Ābidīn], whose date is given by Cunningham as a.d. 1417–67.” Aufrecht places Vallabhadeva, the compiler of this important Sanskrit anthology, in the sixteenth century a.d., on the ground that Vallabhadeva has laid the Sārngadhara-paddhati under contribution in compiling his anthology. With this view Winternitz seems to agree.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1927

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References

page 471 note 1 Introduction, p. 114.

page 471 note 2 Catalogus Catalogorum, i, p. 555a. This date is not justifiable in itself, as the Śārṅgadhara-paddhati was compiled about a.d. 1363.

page 471 note 3 Qeschichte der ind. Lit., iii, p. 158.

page 471 note 4 Ed. Trivandrum Sansk. Ser. 1914–17.

page 471 note 5 Pt. ii, kāṇḍa ii, varga 4, p. 130.

page 471 note 6 The reading slightly varies. In the second pāda there is, before bandhu°, a ca, which is required by the metre (as restored by us). In the third pāda, instead of vanam, the reading in the anthology is gurum.

page 472 note 1 Kāla-varga, śl. 21 (Pt. i, kāṇḍa i, varga 4, pp. 90–1).

page 472 note 2 In the copy of Sarvânanda's commentary noticed by Seshagiri Sastri (Report, 1893–4, No. 2, p. 26), this reference to Kaśmīra-Vallabhadeva-racita-Subhāṣitâvali also occurs; but relying on Peterson's date, Seshagiri Sastri places Sarvânanda between a.d. 1417 and 1431, the last date being obtained by the latter's priority to Rāyamukuṭa (p. 24). But the learned Śāstrī appears to have overlooked this passage bearing on the date of the commentary. The other Vallabha cited by Sarvânanda (Pt. ii, pp. 23, 350) is obviously the well-known scholiast Vallabha, who belonged to the first half of the tenth century and wrote commentaries on the standard mahākāvyas; for Sarvânanda's citations contain a reference to his commentaries on Śiśupāla° and Kumāra°.

page 472 note 3 No fact has yet come to light which would make us doubt or dispute the authenticity of this date given by Sarvânanda himself. He appears to quote no author who is known to be of a later date than the middle of the twelfth century. This date may be corroborated by another fact. Sarvânanda calls himself vandyaghaṭīyârtihara-putra. The word vandyaghaṭi is well known in Bengal as connected with the name of the village from which Vandya or Vandyaghaṭīya Brahmans take their name. We need not take the explanation of Mm. Haraprasād Śāstrī (appended in a note to Seshagiri's Report cited above) that it denotes a person who has married a girl of superior status; for it is probably here a proper name, Sarvânanda describing himself as the son of one Ārtihara. The name actually occurs in the form of Atihara or Atihara in the genealogical table of Vandyaghaṭi Brahmans given in Hari Miśra's Kārikā (quoted in Nagendranāth Vasu's Vaṅger Jātīya Itihāsa, p. 138). It must also be noted that Ātihara's brother's son Vāmana received (according to these Kula-pañjikās) kula-maryādā from Ballālasena (op. cit., p. 142, f.n.), one of whose known dates is a.d. 1160. This date coincides happily with that given by Sarvânanda. It is curious, however, that the name of Atihara's son is not recorded in these genealogical accounts. This is somewhat puzzling; but possibly it may be explained by the not unlikely supposition that as Sarvânanda left Bengal for the distant South (where alone his work has been preserved, and not in Bengal), no account either of him or his family was known or kept in the genealogical books compiled in Bengal for purposes of social reference. Mr. Nagendranath Vasu, however, makes a mistake (op. cit., p. 198, f.n.) when he identifies our author with a much later and better known Sarvânanda, whose father's name is given as Digambara.

page 473 note 1 Peterson identifies most of these citations. No. 1517, which is not found in Naiṣadha, occurs anonymously in Kavîndra-vacana-samuccaya as No. 206 and is probably wrongly attributed to Śrīharṣa.

page 473 note 2 Mankha, (Śrikaṇtha° xxv, 71–2)Google Scholar calls him Jinduka.

page 474 note 1 Contemporary quotations are not unusual in anthologies, as instances of it are not rare in Śarṅgadhara-paddhati and Sadukli-harṇâmṘta. The probability or fact that some of these authors lived beyond the middle of the twelfth century into another decade or two is of no serious consequence to our conclusion. Sarvânanda's reference to a contemporary anthology, again, need not be taken as unusual in a technical treatise. Thus Ruyyaka quotes in his Alaṃkāra-sarvasva (ed. Kāvyamālā, , 35, p. 93)Google Scholar from Kalhaṇa, (Rāja-tara°, iv, 441)Google Scholar which work was not completed till a.d. 1150, as well as from Śrīkaṇṭhacarita of his own pupil Maṅkha, written about a.d. 1145. In a lexicon, as in a work on poetics or grammar, such utilization of “modern” works is not out of place but really admirable.

page 474 note 2 Ed. Kāvyamālā 18, Bombay, 1916.

page 475 note 1 Thomas, , Introduction, p. 16Google Scholar.

page 475 note 2 See my Sanskrit Poetics, i, pp. 158f.

page 476 note 1 None of the three verses attributed to Jonaraja by Vallabhadeva are traceable in Jonarāja's continuation of the Rāja-tara°.

page 477 note 1 Preface to Avantisundarī-kathā, p. 4; Preface to Caturbhāṇī, pp. ii, iv. The MS. copy of the Subhāṣitâvali mentioned in the Report of the Working of the Peripatetic Party of the Oovt. Oriental MSS. Library, Madras, during 1916–19 (p. 40), does not contain the name of the compiler, and appears to be a different work.