________________
XXVIII
INTRODUCTION based on the wrong conclusion that Bhavabhūtı preceded Amarasimha, for, as we now know, Amarasimha belongs to about A.D. 550,1
I side with Bhandarkar, who assigns the first quarter of the eighth century as the date of our author. I here summarize the arguments advanced by him 2
Kalbana in his Rāgatarangine mentions that Bhavabhūti was patronized by Yasovarman, who was subdued by Lalitāditya According to calculations based on this work Lalitāditya-or Muktāpida, as he is otherwise called-reigned from A D. 693 to 729 or A D. 700 to 736 But the Chinese annals represent Candrāpīda, the second successor of Muktāpida, as having received the title of king from the Chinese emperor in AD 720, while according to the Rājatarangi nī, Candıāpīda died in A D 689 As Chinese chronology is more reliable, there must be a mistake of thirty-one years in Kalhana's chronology By applying this correction to Lalitāditya's date, we shall have to assign A.D 724-60 or A D. 731-67 as the period of his reign. Yašovarman, therefore, must have been subdued after A, D 724 or 731 According to the astronomical calculations of Prof. Jacobi, based on the mention of the annular eclipse of the sun, which is mentioned in stanza 799 of Gaudavaho 4 as having happened in the year of Lalitāditya's defeat of Yasovarman, the latter was attacked in A D.731 A certain King I-cha-fon-mo is mentioned by Chinese authors as having sent an ambassador to China in A D 731 This I-cha-fon-mo has been identified with Yaśovarman, and here we have the date of Bhavabhūti's patron from a different source The Jaina Rajasekhara mentions the conversion of Āmarāja, the successor of Yašovai man, by a certain Bappabhattı between the vilorama era, 807 and 881 (=A D.751 and 755). Thus also we have A D 753 as the approximate year of Yasovarman's death. Bhavabhūtı must therefore have lived about the first quarter of the eighth century.5
9. BHAVABHŪTI'S WRITINGS.
Besides his three extant plays which are universally acknowledged to be his productions—a fact which is also corroborated by his own statements in the Preludes to these works, by the uniformity of style and by the mutual repetitions-Bhavabhūtı must have composed some other works as well A native Indian tradition attributes a short poetical work,
1 Vide Dre mdischen Wörterbücher von Th Zachariae, Strassburg, 1897
See his preface in his edition of Maiatimadhava, PP XI-XVII
8 Göt, Gel Anz, 1888, Vol II, pp 67-8.
* Edited by S P. Pandit, Bom Sans. Series, 1887
5 [According to Winternitz, Geschichte der indischen Intteratur, III, p. 281, during the first half of the eighth century, M]
