________________
46
Hanumannātakam : Date and Place of Its Origin*
Vijay Pandyat
Vijay Por
The play Hanumannātakanı bristles with almost intractable problems ranging from its authorship, antiquity, genre, form to the date and the place of its origin. Hanumannātakam 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 Mahānātakam the appellation more current among the scholars. This version is ascribed to Madhusudana Misra, who miglat be regarded as a redactor of the version. The version prevalent in Western india, under the name of the Hanumannātakam with which we shall deal presently in this essay, is ascribed to Damodaramisra. Apart from these two main-stream versions, there are as many versions as there are manuscipts. Pischel's remark made with regard to the Dütärigada that there are as many Dūtāngadas as there are manuscrips.' is applicable with greater force to the versions of the Hanumannātakan, So that is also one of the insurmountable problems connected with this play.
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 thc 40th session of Oriental Conference,
held at Chennai, during 28 to 30 May 2000. + Reader, Dept. of Sanskrit, School of Languages, Gujarat Uni
versity, Ahmedabad-380009
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
