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INTRODUCTION
23
Thus from the passage quoted above, we learn that Mk was the son of Mangaladeva of the Kāśyapa lineage who was contemporaneous with Puruşottamadeva from his early childhood. The poet himself wrote his poem during the reign of Pratāparudradeva. The title Kavirājacakra-cakravarti bears clear testimony to his glorious career as a poet during his time. But curiously enough this title is mentioned only once and that too at the end of the work which we have seen above. His Kāvya consists of twenty Sargas or cantos out of which in the colophons given at the end of the five cantos, e.g. II,III,IV,V, & VI, he calls himself Mārkandeya Mis'ra, while in those given at the end of fuurteen out of the remaing fifteen sargas he calls himself Mārkandeyadeva; and in the colophon given at the end of this work after the twentieth or last sarga, he simply calls himself Mārkandeya with the above title added to it. Unlike him the author of PS invariably calls himself Mārkandeya Kavīndra in the introduction as well as at the end of each pâda of his work. It may be concluded, however, that the surname of the author of DVM was Mis'ra and he be. longed to that Brahmin family of Kāsyapa gotra whose surname was Mis'ra, a fact borne out by the surname of Brāhmaṇas having Kāśyapa as their gotra still found in many parts of Orissa.
A doubt has been raised with regard to the real authorship of DVM after the discovery of the Athinavo veņīsamharanamn nätakam ( still unpublished, the manuscript of which is preserved in Orissa State Museum )
5. GRIERSON puts his name as Märkandega Kavīśvara in his Introduction to Pārijāta-harapa of Umāpati Upādhyāya ; vide BORS Part I, March 1917, p. 21.
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