Indian Antiquary Vol 40

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 93

MARCH, 1911.)
DISCOVERY OF THE PLAYS OF BHASA
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Northern India, and included Surashtra (Kathiāwār) within its limits, as well as Karnal now under the Government of the Panjab.
I take it that the Gurjaras and other foreign tribes settled in Rajputānā, from the sixth centary onwards, adopted the local language, an early form of Rajasthāni, with great rapidity. They brought, I imagine, few women with them, and when they formed unions with Hindū women they quickly learned the religion, customs, and language of their wives. I am inclined to believe that during the period of Gurjara rule, and especially during the ninth and tenth centuries, the Rajasthāni language must have been carried over a wide territory far more extensive than that now occupied by it. It sooms to me that the Gūjars and Ajars of Swät, and the similar tribes in the lower Himalayas to the east of Chambā, should be regarded as survivals of a much larger population which once spoke Rajasthāni, the language of the court and capital, For one reason or other the neighbours of those northern Gūjars and Ajars took up various languages, Pashtū, Lahndā, or whatever it might be, while the graziers and sbepherds clung to the ancient tongue which their ancestors had brought from Rajputāna, and which probably was spoken for a long time in much of the country intervening between the hills and Jaipur. If this theory be sound, the forms of the Himalayan Rajasthani should be more arcbaic than those of modern Jaipuri or the other dialects of Rājputānā, just as in Quebec French is more archaic than carrent Parisian, I do not see any other way of explaining the existence of the Rajasthani outliers,' if I may borrow a convenient term from the geologists. The historical indications do not favour the notion that the Garjaras, etc., came vid Kabul and thence moved southwards, dropping settlements in the Lower Himalayas ; they rather suggest immigration from the west by the Quetta and Kandahār routus, or lines of march still further south. Settlements dropped among the Himalayan Hills by invaders speaking a Central Asian langunge could not possibly have picked up the tongue of eastern Räjputana. The ancestors of the Swat Gujare must have spoken Rājasthani and have learned it in a region where it was the mother-tongue. The far northern extensions of that form of speech must apparently be attributed to the time when the Gurjara kingdom attained its greatest expansion. We know from inscriptions that the dominions of both Mihira-Bhoja and his son, Mahēndrapāla (cir. 840-908 A.D.), included the Karnāl district to the north-west of Delhi,
My answer to the problem proposed at the beginning of this note, therefore, is that the Gujars, etc., of the Lower Himalayas wbo now speak forms of Rajasthani are in large measure of the same stock as many Rājput clans in Rajputānā, the Panjāb, and the United Provinces; that their ancestors emigrated from Rajputana after they had acquired the Rājasthani speech ; and that the most likely time for such emigration is the ninth century, when the Gurjara-Rajput power dominated all northern and north-western India, with its capital at Kansuj.7 DISCOVERY OF THE PLAYS OP BHASA, A PREDECESSOR OF KALIDASA.
BY VINCENT A. SMITH. MR. R. NARASIMHACHAR, the able officer in charge of Archæological Researches in Mysore, makes, in his annual Report for the year ending 30th June, 1910, dated August 1st, the extremely interesting and important announcement that at least one play by Bhasa, the most famous of Kalidasa's predecessors, has been diecovered.
Raaders of the Mysore Archeological Reports being few, I need offer no apology for giving to such a notable discovery more publicity. Mr. Narasimhachar writes as follows:
Para, 116-An important find during the year under report was a manuscript of the Svapna-vAsa vadatta, a drama by the poet Bh&sa. The work was found in the Oriental Manuscripts Library, Madras, by Pandit Anandalvar, the senior copyist of my office, who has also prepared a copy of it for his own use. Bhâsa is a very old dramatist who had attained great 1 For historical, epigraphioal, and numismatio details 800 V. A. Smith
The Gurjares of Rajputina and Kanauj" (J. R. 4. 8., Jan., April, 1909) 1 "White Hun Coins from the Panjab" (Ibid., Jan, 1907): * White Hun Ooins of Vyāghramukha" (Thid.. Oot. 1907);
"The History of the City of Kanadj, etc." (Ibid., July 1908). D. R. Bhandarkar
Foreign elemente in the Hindu Population" (Ind. Ant, 1911, pp. 7-37). Mr. Bhandarkar (p. 30) thinks that Eastern Rajastbil is derived from Pabbri Hindt; but I do not think he can be right.