________________
122
Amrita
the word Anurāa at the end of each chapter as do many of the Mahākāvyas in Sanskrit 133. But from the references to our work by such early writers as Bāna 134 and Dandin who lived soon after the poet we know that the epic also had the title Setubandha which was popular enough to admit of a pun. That name is no doubt applicable to the work with sufficient accuracy because the major portion of it is devoted to the description of the building of the Setu or the bridge over the ocean by the monkeys, while the historical allusion to the building of the boat-bridge over the river Jhelam135 by the author must have helped it to get greater currency. The original name Rāvanavaho must have been also current for a long time as can be inferred from the fact that the Prākrit epic of Vākpatirāja styles itself Gaudavaho no doubt after the manner of the present one.
Tradition attributes this work to a king called Pravarasena and this is borne out by many facts. Both Dandin and Bāņa refer to him as its author, and still later Kșemendra136 quotes a verse as being the composition of Pravarasena which is to be found in the Setubandha. At the beginning of the work we find the expression 'begun by a king'137 applied to the book.
But some doubt is cast on this tradition by the curious colophon found at the end of each Āśvāsaka which runs "ia siripavarasenaviraie kālidāskae mahākavve pāncaraho asāsao parisamatto”138, while the commentator Rāmadāsabhūpati who lived in the 16th century refers to this tradition of the composition of Kālidāsa139. But his further remark that Pravarasena may be the same king as Vikramāditya or even Bhoja shows the extremely confused nature of this tradition even at that early time and so appears to be a pure later invention to father one of the greatest Prākrit epics on the famous poet Kālidāsa. It is impossible to explain if the work really belonged to Kālidāsa, how Bāna never knew this fact and how on the contrary he definitely attributed it to king Pravarasena unless there was some genuine tradition current at his time. From verse nine it is just possible to argue that the work was the composition of some court poet of Pravarasena and was made current by the name of the patron 140. This will also explain to a certain extent the fact that the work was later attributed to Kālidāsa as soon as the real author was forgotten. At any rate both the style marked by long compounds, elaborate puns, strained imagery and the form of the work showing no skill in the arrangement and heedless of repetition both of ideas and of situations would make it extremely improbable that it is from the pen of Kālidāsa.
Whoever be the actual writer of the epic, and we have no means to