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BOOK REVIEW
Biswanath Banerjee-King Śūdraka and His Drama, Orientalia, Collana di Studi Orientali del CESMEO diretta da Irma Piovano, V, Torino, Italy, 1994, pp. 215, price. £. 35.000 or $ 25.
The world of Prakrit and Sanskrit is enriched by the publication of Biswanath Banerjee's King Śūdraka and His Drama, because the drama Mṛcchakaṭika of Śūdraka belongs to both the languages. Very few scholars (can be counted on fingers) have seriously attempted to study exhaustively the different aspects of the Mṛcchakatika, and its author Śūdraka. From the time of its first appearance in 1829 (Mṛcchakatika, with a commentary explanatory of the Prakrit passages, Calcutta, 1829, pp. 2+343) till today, though edited texts and translations in English, French, German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Italian, Russian and in many other languages of Europe have been done, the studies of the drama are very few. Historically, though we may trace the studies of the Mṛcchakatika as early as 1826 by H.H. Wilson and followed by H.C. Kellner (1872), by Mahesh Nyāyaratna (1877), E. Windisch (1885), Sylvain Levy (1890), A. Boltz (1894) and others, their studies are only on some aspects of the drama, and not on a systematic pattern. It was Nishi Kanta Chaṭṭopadhyāya who made a study of the drama as early as 1902 (mentioned by Banerjee) by pointing out the many-sidedness of Śūdraka. The book was long out of print and now it is edited, revised, and augmented with an Introduction, Bibliography and extracts by Satya Ranjan Banerjee. Even then a thorough study of the Mṛcchakatika was a desideratum,and Professor Banerjee has fulfilled that long-felt want. In the Corpus of India Studies, Calcutta, 1980, pp. 281-296, Biswanath Banerjee also wrote an article on King Śūdraka and the role of Śakāra in the Mṛcchakaṭika.
It is, therefore, quite in the fitness of things that Professor Banerjee with his long standing research experience has undertaken such a project for the benefit of the scholarly world. It goes without saying that Professor Banerjee has shown his critical faculty in describing the different aspects of Śūdraka and his drama.
The book has seven chapters and three appendices along with Prefatory Note, Introduction and select Bibliography. In the Prefatory Note the writer has stated that it is "a brilliant composition in the
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