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INTRODUCTION
Mārkaņdeya and his Vilāsavati Mārkaņdeya is the author of the Prākṣta-sarvasva' which occupies an important position among Prākrit grammars. Very • little is known about his personal history. He composed his grammar in the reign of Mukundadeva who ruled over Utkala or Orissa. There was a king of Orissa of this name during the second half of the 17th century A. D. to which period Markandeya may be tentatively assigned. Prohibiting the use of Genetive for purposive Dative, he remarks thus in his grammar (V. 131):
क्वचिन तादर्थे । तादर्थे विहितायाः चतुर्थ्याः षष्ठी न स्यात् । 'पाणाअ गओ भमरो लब्भइ दुक्खं गइंदेसु ॥' 'सुहाअ रज किर होइ रण्णो ।' इति मम विलासवतीसट्टके ॥
The remark is quite plain, and we learn that Mārkandega composed a Sațțaka, Vilāsavati by name, Viśvanātha (c. 14th century A. D.) mentions in his Sāhityadarpaņa (VI. 277-79, prose remark) one Vilāsavati, a Nätya-rāsaka, which obviously must be an earlier and different work. The name of Vilāsavati as a heroine is pretty old and figures in the stories composed by Haribhadra (8th century A. D.), Sādhāraṇa (11th century A. D.) etc. If we can discover a Ms. of the Vilāsavati Sattaka, composed as it is by an eminent Prākrit grammarian like Mārkandeya, it would be of great value to assess the nature of Prākrit in a Sattaka.
Vis'ves'vara and his S'rngāra-mañjari Visvešvara, the son of Lakşmīdhara, belonged to Almodha or Almora, and flourished during the first quarter of the 18th century A. D. The editors of Kāvyamālā have recorded that his eighth descendent, Deveśvara (Cunilāla) by name, lived some time earlier than 1910 at Anūpasahara on the Ganges. It is said that Viśveśvara began his literary enterprises at the age of ten and died prematurely at about forty. He is a voluminous writer, and there stand against his name more than twenty works of which Navamālikā is a Nātikā and Sủngāra-mañjarī is
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Edited by S. P. V. Bhattanatha Swami, Vizaga patam 1927; L. NittiDolci: Les Grammairiens Prākrits, Paris 1938, pp. 89 etc. Jinaratnakośa by H. D. Velankar, Poona 1944, p. 358. Kávyamālā VIII, pp. 51-52; M. Krishnamachariar: History of Classical Sanskrit Literature, p. 355.
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