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the theatre, a work which we have no reason to suppose was actually laid on the sutradhara of the stage. The term, with others, was taken orer bodily from one art into the other : and in its new acceptation applied to that one among the actors who was to the production of a play what the real sutradhâra was to the building of a house.
Sankara's note on the Bhasa verse is as follows: सत्रधारः पूर्वरंगस्य प्रवक्ता स्थापकः स्थपतिश्च भूमिकाः पात्राणि रामाद्यनकार्यावस्थाभमयः उपभो. गनिमित्तान्युत्पत्ति (उपर्युपरि?) स्थानानि पताका अर्थप्रकृतिः उक्तं च
बीजं बिंदु: पताका च प्रकरीकार्यमेव च
अर्थप्रकृतयो ह्येताः पंच सर्वप्रयोगगा इति यन तु पराये स्यात्प्रधानस्योपकारक
प्रधानवच कल्पेत सा पताकेति कीर्त्यते वैजयंतीच पताका. Next comes Kalidasa :
निर्गतासु न वा कस्य कालिदासस्य सूक्तिषु ।
प्रीतिर्मधुरसार्दासु मञ्जरीष्विव जायते ।। " And so soon as Kalidasa's sweet sayings went forth from him, was there any one who did not rejoice in them as in honey-laden flowers."
The colourless character of the description here given of Kalidasa's works is much to be regretted. But the negative evidence of the verse as it stands is not unimportant. It is difficult for us now to imagine a time when the supremacy that has for a thousand years been assigned to Śakuntalâ among India's dramatic works was withheld from, or only grudgingly bestowed on, Kalidasa. A poet, however, like a prophet, is not honoured in his own country or in his own time; and we have it on Kalidasa's own authority that his plays were received with a certain amount of prejudice by the literary critics, who, in those days as ever, loved to say that the old is better.'* There is a good deal of other evidence for the comparatively late date now sought to be assigned to Kalidasa; and on a review of that evidence it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the explanation of the nature of Bâņa's references to the younger poet, and to Bhâsa respectively, is that at the time he wrote Kalidasa's plays had either not been written, or were still far from occupying the prominent place in the nation's literature they
* सूत्र | अभिहितोस्मि परिषदा कालिदासग्रथितवस्तुमालविकाग्निमित्र नाम नाटकमस्मिन्वसन्तोत्सवे प्रयोक्तव्यमिति तदारभ्यतां संगीतकम् ।
पारि० मा तावत् प्रथितयशसा भासकविसौमिल्लकविमिश्रादीनां प्रबन्धानतिक्रम्य वर्तमानकवेः कालिदासस्य क्रियायां कथं परिषदो बहुमानः । सूत्र | अयि विवेकविश्रान्तमाभिहितम् | पश्य ।
पुराणमित्येव न साधु सर्व न चापि कव्यं नवमित्यवद्यम् । सन्तः परीक्ष्यान्यतरद्भजन्ते मूढः परप्रत्ययनेयबुद्धिः ॥
