Lilavai

SR No.: 002796
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: A N Upadhye
Publisher: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
Publication Year: 1966
Total Pages: 500
Language: Sanskrit, Hindi, English
Classification: Book_Devnagari & Literature
File Size: 15 MB

Page 78

INTRODUCTION
the first Satavahana in the 3rd century B. c. It has become customary to take him to be the same as Hala mentioned in the Purāņic list and belong. ing to the 1st century A. D.; but all this is hypothetical and based on convenient linking of bits of traditional and legendary information. The evolution of Prakrit language and the various trends of Prākrit literature would point out that the substratum of this anthology can be assigned to the 2nd or 3rd century A. D.; and thereafter many gäthäs have been added to it from time to time.
In this anthology Hāla is not only an editor or compiler of the gäthäs of other poets but also an author of some. He is said to have been a liberal patron of poets like Sri-pälita (= Padalipta ?) who might have participated in shaping this Anthology. Once the royal name Hala became popular in literature, Indian tradition could easily raise Sātavāhana or Salivāhana, who is also the founder of an era current in the South, to the status of a mighty monarch with a legendary halo; and nothing could be more appropriate for our author than to select Hala, the far-famed monarch of Pratisthāna in Mahārāstra, well-known as a Prākrit poet and renowned for his partiality for Prākrits, as the Hero of a Prākrit poem, written especially in the Māhārāstrī dialect. That he was a kavi-vatsala' is also indicated in our poem: when he went to Pätāla led by Nāgārjuna, he was accompanied by one hundred poets.
The poem Lilavati associates Vijayānanda, Pottisa, Bhatta Kumā. rila and Nagarjuna with Häla. As a name, Pottisa is not of frequent occurrence, though a poet of this name is known." Vijayānanda looks
1 Ramacarita of Abhinanda TT1454 #fagy: aforesai neat, frá
कालिदासकवयो नाताः शकारातिना । श्रीहर्षों विततार गद्यकवये बाणाय वाणीफलं, सद्यः सक्रिययाऽभिनन्दमपि 3 sferqiet XXII. 100. Quoted in the note on Satavahana in the Kavyamala ed, of Gathasaptaśati (2nd ed.) p. 2 and in the Kavyamimamsa (3rd ed.) p. 204. The editors of the Gathasaptaśati (2nd ed. p. 2) have further inferred thus: एतेन श्रीपालितकविनव धनालप्सया स्वप्रभोहीलस्य नाम्नायं गाथासप्तशतकग्रस्थः संगृहीत स्यादित्यनु
peal. See also the 3rd ed., p. 8 of the Bhumika. 2 See p. 54 footnote 1. Some take Kavivatsala as a proper name, but that is not
convincing: it is just an adjective of Hala. 3 Lilavati, Gatha No. 1020. 4 There was a poet of this name. At least three gathas from Hala's Kosa,
namely, I. 89, III. 33 and V. 3 are attributed to Pottisa, see Nirnayasagara ed., Bombay 1911, Gathănukramanikå pp. 5, 10 and 12. Rajasekhara also refers in his Karpūramañjari (I. 20/20) to a poet Pottisa along with Hariüddha, Namdiüddha and Hala.