________________ The drift of the story would suggest rivalry between Prince Candraketu, the Prati-Nayaka, and Harinandi. Even the solitary citation shows sufficient originality on the part of the author and also variety of incidents. The noble character of Harinandi comes out prominently, as also the loyalty of his Brahman friend, who endures, for his friend's sake, victimization from the palace.' 2. The twenty eighth chapter of Bhoja's Srngaraprakasa treats the topic of sending of love - messengers as a part of the treatment of Purvanuraga, the first variety of Vipralambha Srngara. Messengers are classified on the basis of various types of their characteristics. Functionally distinguished messengers include Gardner, Vidusaka, Vita, Pithamarda etc. As an instance of Pithamarda, serving as a love - messenger, Bhoja mentions Dantaka, who is said to serve Sudravatsa in a work called Kamasena - vipralambha . Raghavan's note on this is as follows (Srngaraprakasa, p. 826.) : "The examination of the Kathasaritsagara, the Brhat-kathamanjari and the Kathakosa have (sic) not produced any fruits in the matter of indentifying at least some version of a story with the heroine called Kamasena and a hero called Sudravatsa (?) with a Pithamarda-aid named Dantaka". Now, we come across several casual literary allusions from the beginnig of the eleventh century onwards, to an Apabhraisa romantic tale, which relates to the adventures of a prince called Suddaya, i. e. Sudraka. Moreover, we have several literary compositions in Old Gujarati and Rajasthani, which present different versions of that tale. There is also a Sanskrit recast of the earliest known Gujarati version. The tale continues to live to the present day in folk-literary traditions of Gujarat and Rajasthan. I have collected early references to this story from Vira's Janbusamicariya (1020 A.C.), Nayanandin's Sudamsana - [28]