Indian Antiquary Vol 42

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

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[FEBRUARY, 1913
Such conclusions would, no doubt, appear quite unimportant and scarcely worth the trouble of a special inquiry to those searchers who busy themselves with the history and the literature of the European peoples. The Indologe, however is unfortunately not in that happy position to look down with contempt, even upon such general results. Because, the history proper of Indian Artificial Poetry begins not earlier than in the first half of the seventh contury of our era, with the reign of the mighty king Harsha or Harshavardhana of Thanesar and Kanouj, who ruled over the whole of Northern India from 606-648 A.D. The works of his favourite court-poet Bâṇabhaṭṭa who tried to portray the life of his master and of himself in the incomplete historical novel Sri-Harshacharita, and who besides wrote, as we know for certainty, the romance Kadamlari, and the poem (song) Chandi-sataka, and perhaps also the drama Parvati-parinaya, are the oldest products of the Court-poetry, whose composition, no doubt, falls within the narrow limits given above. Before this time, there exists no Kavya as such whose age is hitherto determined with some accuracy and certainty or allows itself to be determined with the accessible documents. Only of one work which shows, throughout, the influence of the Karya style and which contains several sections entirely written in the Kavya style, we mean, of Varâhamihira's metrical Manual of Astrology, the Brihat-samhitd, it can be said with confidence that it is written about the middle of the sixth century; because Varâhamihira begins the calculations in his Pañchasiddhantika, with the year 505 A.D.; and he is supposed to have died in the year 587 A.D. according to the statement of one of his commentators. As to when the most celebrated classical poets Kalidasa, Subandhu, Bharavi, Pravarasena, Gunadhya and the collector of verses, Hâla-sâtavahana lived, we possess no historical evidence. We can only say that the wide spread of their renown is attested for the first half of the seventh century by the mention of their names by Bâna and in the Aihole-Meguți inscription of 634 A.D.; as also that some of them, like Gunadhya to whose work Subandhu does allude repeatedly, must certainly have belonged to a considerably early period. Besides this, there are anecdotes only poorly attested, as well as sayings of very doubtful worth; and the scanty details contained in the poems themselves, which might serve as points (stepping stones) for determining their age, are very difficult to be estimated, because the political and literary history of India during the first five centuries of our era lies very much in obscurity. When the age of the most important poets is so absolutely uncertain, it is but natural that the case should be in no way better with the general question of the age of the Kavya poetry. In the literature, we come across very meagre traces which point to the fact that the artificial poetry was cultivated from earlier timès; and to our great regret, even the. age of the most important work in which quotations from Kavyas occur, we mean, the Mahabhashya, is in no way, above doubt. Thus it is not improbable that these quotations might be left unheeded as being witnesses little to be trusted as some of the most important inquirers have already done, and that theories, not taking notice of the same, might be put forth, which shift the growth of the artificial poetry to a very late age. Under these circumstances it can be easily seen why I make myself bold to claim some interest for the evidence based upon the testimony of inscriptions, in favor of a relatively high antiquity of the artificial poetry.
The materials which the third volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum offers for this inquiry, are not insignificant, and comprise not less than 18 numbers whose dates are certain or at least approximately determinable, the age of their composition lying about between 350 and 550 A.D. The assiduous labours of Mr. Fleet and Mr. Dikshit, about the astronomically calculable dates of the Gupta-inscriptions, irrefutably show that the beginning of the Gupta era falls 241 years later than that of the Saka ers, and for the reducing of the Gupta to the Christian era, they leave us just the option of adding 318 or 319 years. Mr. Fleet has tried to show that the year 319 or 320 A.D. marks the beginning of the Gupta era. Dr. Bhandarkar, on the other hand, advocates 318 or 319, and for important reasons. For a literary-historical inquiry, it is of course the same (it matters not, it is indifferent which of these suppositions is the right one). The first king who makes use of the Gupta era is Chandragupta II, named Vikramaditya, whose inscriptions and coins show the years 82-94 or 95, i.e., 400-413 or 401-414 A.D. From
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