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In other words, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the poems brought together in the Kosha were original. Now there are, I submit, grounds for supposing that Hâla's Saptaśatakam is a collection of this kind : and not, as the eminent scholar Weber holds, a collection of verses by different hands. In his essay "On the Saptasatakam of Håla,” Weber discusses this question as follows:-"That the work is a collection, and not the production of a single author is clear not only from the author's own words in the third verse, but, more particularly, from the circumstance that the scholiast, though unfortunately he does not carry the practise beyond the beginning of the commentary, gives with each verse the name of its author. These names moreover are given in prakrit,* a circumstance which makes it tolerably certain that they belong to the text. Unfortunately they break off with the 15th verse. The names given up to that are: Hålassa (the compiler himself! +) 4, 13, Vodieassa 5, Chullohassa 6, Maarandasenassa 7, Amararâ. assa 8, Kumârillassa 9, Sirirâassa (Śrfrâja) 11, Bhimasâmino (Bhimasvamin) 14. Of all these names only one, Kumârila, is familiar to us in another connection, namely, as that of the eminent teacher of the Mîmâņsa philosophy. ... Besides these, Bhâo Dâji mentions. the following as given also by Kulanâtha: Kavirâja, Vishộudatta, Ratirâja, Paramararasika, Nâsîra, Avarâî, Kavva, Usala, Jalaharadhvani, Kesava. These must, I suppose, be given in parts of the commentary which have not come into my hands. Among these names, too, which it must be noted have a somewhat strange and suspicious look, but which like the previous ones are in prâksit, so as, like them, to raise the presumption that they belong to the text, there is again only one familiar to us in another connection, namely, that of Kavirâja, known to us as that of the author of the Râghầvapapdavîyam, who however cannot, on account of the date, be thought of here." The "author's own words” to which Weber refers in the beginning of this pas. eage are found in the third verge of the Saptasatakam, and run as
"In prakritischer Genetiv form." I omit the last word, as I do not understand that Weber lays any stress on the circumstance that the names are, as always, in the genitive case. May I in passing, with all respect, deprecate the attack on Bhào Daji's 'curious style'--for what is obviously a printer's error-as proceeding from the learned German whose own style is the despair of the English translator.
+ There would be nothing surprising in the fact of a compiler of an antho. logy including verses of his own." Sårpgadhara, the compiler of the anthology often in the various divisions of the work inserts efforts of his own. These bave no poetical merit. In the 14th century Sarasvati's lips had long been closed." (Anfrecht's paper in the magazine of the German Oriental Society.) I have noticed the same circunstance in a Subhashitavali of Vallabhdeva in my possession.
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