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( 115 )
either by the carrying over from one verse to one or more following verses of the same situation (vv. 70 and 71, 80 and 81, 129 and 130, 135 and 137), or by the recurrence of a catch word in several verses that stand together (vv. 118-20, 122-125, 156 and 157, 162 and 163, 259–264, 267–269, 308-310, 315 and 316, 324 ard 325, and 329 and 330).
The locale of all the verses appears to be the same, while the slightly varying themes on which all the seven hundred verses ring the changes are no more inconsistent with a common origin than the love plaints of Heine's Buch der Leider, or the various shapes one sorrow takes in Tennyson's In Memoriam. The matter is again not one on which to dogmatise : but if this be, as I believe it is, the character of the Saptaśatakam of Hala, we may perhaps be permitted to see in that circumstance corroboration of the traditional identification of Hala with the Satavahana, who by his “Treasury” won for himself a fame that could not perish.
The question of Satavahana's date I do not wish to enter upon. I content myself with pointing out, as Bhào Dâji and Weber have already done, * that the author of the Katha-sarit-sågara makes him a contemporary of Guņådhya, the author of the Vșihatkatha. This is found also in Kshemendra's Vsihatkathâ.t Somadeva makes Guñadhya the minister of king Satavahâna of Pratishthana. That the Satavahana and the author of the Vsihatkathả to whom reference is made here by Bâna were contemporaries is at all events then not out of keeping with the view I have endeavoured to support of the general character of this passage.
कीतिः प्रवरसेनस्य प्रयाता कुमुदोज्ज्वला ।
सागरस्य परं पारं कपिसेनेव सेतुना ।। “The glory of Pravarasena flashed, bright as the lotus, to the further shore of the sea by means of the Bridge,' just like the army of a pes."
There can, I take it, be no reasonable doubt that the reference here, as Weber first recognised, is to the extant Prakrit poem the Setu. ka vya or Set 1 bandha. But it appears to me to be quite as certain that Bâņa knows nothing of the tradition which ascribes that poem to Kalidasa. There is no authority for the omission of the next following couplet with regard to Bhâsa, so as to bring the couplet in which Kalidasa is mentioned by name in juxtaposition with our verse. And it appears to me to be impossible to admit that verses
• Essay, p. 2. + Bubler's paper in Indian Antiquary, Vol. I., p. 307.
Max Müller ("India: What can It teach us," p. 315,) pointed out this difficulty to Dr. Bho Dji. I may add that there appears to be no doubt that the proper reading in what I may call the Kalidasa verse is Nirgatásu na vi kasya
