Setubandha

Author(s): Krishnakant Handiqui
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 30

INTRODUCTION
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Rāmadāsa who belongs to Rājasthān introduces an altogether new story about the authorship of the Setubandha. He says at the beginning of his commentary that the poem was composed by Kalidasa for Mahārāja Pravarasena at the command of Mahārājādhirāja Vikramāditya. It may also be noted that the colophon at the end of the different Cantos in some of the Setubandha manuscripts belonging to the recension of Rāmadāsa refers to the poem as 'composed by Pravarasena and made by Kalidasa' (siri-Pavaraseña-viraie Kalidasakae dahamuha-vahe mahakavvel). The report that the Setubandha was composed, or perhaps revised, by Kalidasa is apparently based on a tradition current in Rajasthan, and not found in any of our commentators other than Rāmadāsa. Another such report seems to have been current at the time, as Rāmadāsa says in his gloss on Setu 1.9 that, according to some, Pravarasena is Bhojadeva?. apparently the famous Paramāra king and author of the first half of the eleventh century, an absurd date for the Setubandha. So far as Kālidāsa is concerned, considerations of style if not the date of composition militate against the attribution of the work to the famous poet, a point to which we shall presently return.
That Pravarasena, the author of the Setubandha, was a well-known king can be deduced from an inscription of the Cambodian king Yaśovarman, who reigned in the last decade of the ninth century A. D. Verse 34 of this inscription says in praise of Yaśovarman :
Yena pravarasenena dharma-setum vivịņvatā 1 parah pravaraseno'pi jitah prākstasetukst 1,5
1 See NS edition. In Goldschmidt's edition the reference to Kālidāsa is found only
at the end of three Cantos. 2 Pravaraseno bhojadeva iti kecit. 3 Inscriptions of Kambuja, ed. Majumdar, p. 99. The Asiatic Society, Calcutta, 1953.