Page:The Indian Antiquary Vol 2.djvu/344

 306 THE INDIAN ANTIQUAKY. [October, 1873. Man is a brute, a plant, a mineral: Each hopeful part must love each hopeless one ;* The hopeless ones around the hopeful spin, Just as the hopeful ones these do attract. The Lover, straw-attractor,f needs no shape— The straw contends on that far distant way. Abandon this.—Mute adoration’s love Into the heart of God most brightly shines ; His mercy pities human creatures all, His glory from this perfect grace will shrink. Man’s reason is astonished to know : Is this attraction human or divine P CHAND’B MENTION OF gRI HARSHA AND KALIDASA. It may safely be said that there is not a single date in Sanskrit chronology which is not, or has not been, disputed. Not many years ago, if the question had been asked, When did the famous poet K&lid&sa live ? the unhesitating answer would have been, ‘ At the time when Yikram&ditya established his era, about 50 years before Christ :* and probably this is still the Hindu belief. But all modern scholars are unanimous in concluding that he must be referred to a much later period, and that the king Bhoja, at whose court he flourished, was the second of that name, whose reign is fixed as commencing in 483 and termin¬ ating in 538 a.d. This shows how desirable it is to abstain from any positive assertion in matters of the kind until every particle of evidence has been carefully collected and weighed. It is deci¬ dedly premature for B&bti R&m D&s Sen to state dogmatically that the king of Kanauj under whose patronage Sri Harsha wrote the Naishadha, was evidently a contemporary of P y i t h i r & j: for if tho evidence to the fact were generally accepted as conclusive, the controversy, which has now filled some pages of the Antiquary, could never have arisen. The lines which I quoted & propos to the previous discussion bring forward C h a n d as a perfectly new and independent witness, and his testimony cannot be so summarily set aside. I am convinced that no unprejudiced person can read his list of elder authors without recognising that it is intended to be arranged in chronological order. The names are only eight in number, viz. Sesh-nag, Vishnu, Vy&sa, Suka-deva, 6ri Harsha, Kalid&sa, Danda-m&li and Jayadeva. No ortho¬ dox Hindu will deny that the first four are correctly so placed at the head of tho list. Simi¬ larly the two that he names last are unmistakeably modern writers ; for D a n d a-m a 1 i is referred, at earliest, to the end of the tenth century, and Jayadeva to a still more recent date. Wilson • Hopeful = immortal, hopeless = mortal; i.e. spiritual and material. t This is the literal translation of the Persian word for amber, which, together with ‘Lover in the simile, stands even took him to be a disciple ofK&m&nan d— an extreme theory which cannot now be maintained, since we find him mentioned by C h a n d, who on the most moderate computation preceded Rama- n a n d by a full century. There remain only the two names of & r i Harsha and Kalidasa: the latter, as observed above, flourished at the beginning of the 6th century after Christ; he there¬ fore preceded the two last names in the catalogue and came after the first four, and is so far unques¬ tionably placed in his proper chronological rank. Thus the sole exception—if it is an exception—to the correct sequence is in the case of & r i Harsha, whose precise date is the very matter in dispute. The most natural conclusion to be drawn from the passage is that in C h a n d ’ s opinion S r i H a r- s h a was a writer of considerable antiquity. It is possible that he may have been in error in placing him before K a 1 i d & s a; but he clearly indicates that he was by no means a contemporary writer, and this is a point about which he could not possi¬ bly be mistaken. His attribution of the Bhoja- prabandha to K & 1 i d a s a is of course not strictly correct. The work, as we have it, is known to have been compiled by Ball&laMisra, who at least supplied the prose framework. But a great part of the poetical extracts which form the bulk of the work, may with considerable probability be ascribed to K & 1 i d A s a. Mr. Beames’ letter scarcely needs a reply ; and he admits that I have succeeded in explaining the allusion in both the passages I quote, which is the matter of most importance. And until some reasonable explanation can be given of the two forms naramrdva and shaddlia—a contingency which I do not regard as imminent—I shall conti¬ nue to look upon both as mere clerical errors, and read for the one naramr&pa, and for the other iuddha. The literal translation of the couplet is : ‘ Fifth, the excellent Sri Harsha, paragon of men, who dropt the ennobling wreath on king Nala’s neck/ This is identical with my metrical version, since the excellence intended is clearly excellence as a poet. In the line referring to K&lidasa, the phrase setabandhyan—literally, * built up the pile’—means nothing more than ‘constructed/ It was selected by Chand solely on account of its similarity in sound to the name of the book, Bhoja-pra&and/ia. A similar alliterative phrase in English would be, ‘ composed a posy of sweet song/ The only difficulty in the line is the word ti, which I take to be a mere expletive. F. S. GBOWSE. Mathura, N. W. P., July 31,1873. for God, and straws for man, to express the attraction ex¬ erted by the Creator on the creature. There occur figures of speech still more strange and incongruous to our notions ; the translator has accordingly omitted four lines here.