________________
(Lxxiv)
the Gaüdavaho was composed years after the heroic event of the killing of the Magadha king and nothing more. If he was, for instance, the 'King's favourite' before, he continues to be so even now, as much as he continued to be the 'Kaviraja' at his court, which certainly was not a thing of the past, when he wrote the Gaüḍavaho. We would, therefore, hold that Yasovarman was at the zenith of the glory, when Vākpatiraja wrote the present Gauḍavaho i. e. only the Prelude. Then came, in 740 A.D. the defeat and the disgrace of Yasovarman, which, perhaps, prevented Vākpatirāja from writing further in continuation of the present Poem. The period of reign of Yasovarman is 725 A. D. to 754 A. D. The date of the composition may, therefore, be some time between 731 A.D. and 735 A.D. M. M. Mirashi places it between 727-731 A.D. Says Dr. Belwalkar43: "In determining the date of the writing of the Gaüḍvaho, no question could be more pertinent than this: Why does the poem, planned upon an 'enormous' scale, stop short with the prelude and not even take up the slaughter of the Gaudian king, that is, the very subject, which, to judge from the title of the poem, should form its main substance? The most natural answer is that Vākpatirāja began his panegyric in the days of Yasovarman's greatest successes and that, after writing his prelude of 1200 stanzas, he was moved to abandon the subject proper by reason of some great disaster or humiliation that befell his patron - presumably the humiliation experienced at the hands of Lalitãditya. If this is certain, as it is plausible, the composition of the Gaüḍavaho would be not far from A. D. 736".
43. Belwalkar-Rama's Later History ', Introduction.
P. xLiv.
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