Gaudavaho

Author(s): Vakpatiraj, Narhari Govind Suru, P L Vaidya, A N Upadhye, H C Bhayani
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 90

(Lxxiii)
(v) In Gāthā 113 we are told that "the young wives of gods, in whom the passion of love was excited by the pleasure they felt at the sight of his fighting on the battlefield, are, I believe, still love-sick in their hearts." The expression' still' can only refer to a state of circumstances under which any fighting by him had become impossible i.e. he had been dead.
"The above considerations says Pandit 42 "lead us to infer that the Gauḍavaho was probably written in the first quarter of the 8th century or between A. D. 700 and A. D. 725, for at that time Yasovarman must have slain the Gaudian king, long before he was himself deprived of his throne by Lalitaditya, which event must have occurred, if it did occur, in the very early part of the 8th century, as it was the first exploit of the Kashmirian king after he came to the throne in A.D. 695.
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The arguments advanced by Pandit to prove that the Gaüdavaho was written long after the death of the Magadha king by Yasovarman and also after his own defeat at the hands of Lalitāditya and perhaps his own death also, are not at all convincing. The reasons given by him may at the most go to prove only one fact viz. that the composition of the present Gauḍavaho was done by Vakpatirāja some years after the memorable event of the slaughter of the Gauda king in the course of the King's Digvijaya. But even after many years the event of the Gauḍavaho was so fresh in the minds of his subjects that the Poet had at last been prevailed upon by his learned friends to take up the writing of this Poem in commemoration of the event. The words indicative of the past tense, like 'āsi' and 'purā', only go to prove that 42. Pandit-Gaüdavaho-Introduction. p. xcvi to c.
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