Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/374

 Udayana's court after suffering shipwreck. The plot is unconnected with mythology, but is based on an historical or epic tradition, which recurs in a somewhat different form in Somadeva's Kathāsaritsāgara. As concerned with the second marriage of the king, it forms a sequel to the popular love-story of Vāsavadattā. It is impossible to say whether the poet modified the main outlines of the traditional story, but the character of the magician who conjures up a vision of the gods and a conflagration, is his invention, as well as the incidents, which are of an entirely domestic nature. The real author was doubtless some poet resident at Çrīharsha's court, possibly Bāṇa, who also wrote a play entitled Pārvatīpariṇaya.

Altogether, Ratnāvalī is an agreeable play, with well-drawn characters and many poetical beauties. Of the latter the following lines, in which the king describes the pale light in the east heralding the rise of the moon, may serve as a specimen:—


 * Our minds intent upon the festival,
 * We saw not that the twilight passed away:
 * Behold, the east proclaims the lord of night
 * Still hidden by the mountain where he rises,
 * Even as a maiden by her pale face shows
 * That in her inmost heart a lover dwells.

Another play of considerable merit attributed to Çrīharsha is Nāgānanda. It is a sensational piece with a Buddhistic colouring, the hero being a Buddhist and Buddha being praised in the introductory benediction. For this reason its author was probably different from that of Ratnāvalī, and may have been Dhāvaka, who, like Bāṇa, is known to have lived at the court of Çrīharsha.

The dramatist was a Brahman of the Taittirīya school of the Yajurveda and belonged, as we