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46
Hanumannātakam Date and Place of Its Origin*
Vijay Pandya+
The play Hanumannāṭakam bristles with almost intractable problems ranging from its authorship, antiquity, genre, form to the date and the place of its origin. Hanumannāṭakam as its title indicates has Hanumat as its author, which is another euphemistic way of stating that its author is not known. The play has got some unique features which set it apart from any other form of Sanskrit drama prevalent in Classical Sanskrit literature. It has got another version in vogue in Bengal known as Mahānāṭakam the appellation more current among the scholars.' This version is ascribed to Madhusudana Miśra, who might be regarded as a redactor of the version. The version prevalent in western india, under the name of the Hanumannāṭakam with which we shall deal presently in this essay, is ascribed to Damodaramiśra. Apart from these two main-stream versions, there are as many versions as there are manuscipts. Pischel's remark made with regard to the Dütängada that there are as many Dūtāngadas as there are manuscrips.2 is applicable with greater force to the versions of the Hanumannāṭakam. So that is also one of the insurmountable problems connected with this play.
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As a play it has some unique features, To mention a few, it has no prologue or prastāvanā. Though it starts with some benedictory stanzas some of which seem to have been * Paper presanted at the 40th session of Oriental Conference, held at Chennai, during 28 to 30 May 2000.
Reader, Dept. of Sanskrit, School of Languages, Gujarat University, Ahmedabad-380009
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