________________
3TTHET4-869 • 22
discontent to derive very specific inferences about the author's personal life. If a certain type of stanza came to be attracted to the collection from a very distant past and if this process had gone on for several centuries as Kosambi himself has rightly concluded, the unity we feel in the collection must be of a deeper and general kind. It must be a philosophical or temperamental unity, not one arising out of a specific personal circumstances of a single individual. In identifying the unifying element of the collection Kosambi, an impressively versatile and imaginative practitioner of textual criticism, has allowed his own social and political
philosophy to read what the available evidence does not warrant. 10.I am as yet not convinced that Aśva-ghosa wrote before Kālidāsa, that
the surviving versions of Svapna-vāsava-datta and Pratijñā-yaugandharāyana come from a period extending beyond Kālidāsa or that the other plays attributed to Bhāsa were in fact composed by the predecessor carrying
that name who is mentioned by Kálidāsa in his Mālavikāgni-mitra. 11.Miller (1967:xxvi, 1990:7, 12-13) and Bailey (1994:2, 1996:203) seem
to assume that all the poetic images, conventions and techniques witnessed in BH's poetry were inherited. I do not think we should rule out the other possibility that BH made some original contributions in all these areas and thus influenced the course of Sanskrit poetry in the following centuries. We need to entertain such a possibility especially in view of the likelihood that the earliest poems assignable to BH may predate Kālidāsa's Sākuntala and the earliest reconstructible version
of the Pañca-tantra (Kosambi 1948: Introduction p.78). 12. Takakusu's (1896:179-180) translation : "Having desired to embrace
(emphasis in the origina] the excellent Law he bacame a homeless priest, but overcome by worldly desires he returned again to the laity. In the same manner he became seven times a priest, and seven times returned to the laity. Unless one believes well in the truth of cause and effect, one cannot act strenuously like him. He wrote the following verses full of self-approach:
Through the enticement of the world I returned to the laity. Being free from secular pleasures again I wear the priestly cloak. How do these two impulses
Play with me as if a child ? ... Once when a priest in the monastery, being harassed by worldly desires, he was disposed to return to the laity. He remained, however, firm and asked a student to get a carriage outside the monastery. On being
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
