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INTRODUCTION
37
DVM. He gives expression to his poet's taste even in a work like Prakrit grammar having set all its crude aphorisms in metrical form. Occasional poetic flashes do also come to the sight of the reader in the following manner:
राजपत्न्यादिवत्रन्दुसवासहृदयंगमा ।।
मृदुगम्भीरसंदर्भा शौरसेनी धिनोतु वः ॥ As we have seen above, Mk wrote his PS during the reign of Mukundadeva who ruled Oriss from 1559 to 1568. He must have composed his work about 15601565 which was the glorious period of the rule of Mokundadeva, which he so finely describes in the colophon. This work was certainly composed towards the last part of his life, for taking into consideration the period of composition of DVM which came from his own pen, we find that he wrote it during the reign of Pratāparudradeva who ascended the throne in 1497. We also see that he used • lit' in case of Puruşottamadeva, the father of Pratāparudradeva, indicating thereby that he did not see Puruşottamadeva during his lifetime or at the most he was a mere child when Puruşottamadeva was alive. Thus he might have composed his DVM round about 1525 when Pratāparudradeva was ruling, and the author was quite grown up to compose a poem like DVM. Hence we can take his age to be 35 years by that time so that his date of birth would fall about 1490. Again he must have lived some more years after the completion of his grammar near about 1562, say upto 1565 A. D. In that case we can determine his date as circa 1490 to 1565 A. D. Thus the date of Mk as determined by Shri K. N. MAHAPATRA to be 1475 to 1565 looks fallacious, since there is no reason of taking him to be contemporaneous with
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