________________
xviii
VAJJÁLAGGAM
tion must have been about 15 stanzas. But the average length of each section in the Vulgate (with 95 sections and 795 stanzas) is about 8. This means that in the original VL there must have been many more stanzas in many of its forty-eight sections than we have in the corresponding sections in the Vulgate.
(v) Date of the Vajjālagga :
The problem of the date of the VL is to be understood only in the sense of the probable period in which the VL was compil. ed by the author. An attempt is made here to define the upper and lower limits within which the compilation of the VL can be probably placed. Upper limit, internal evidence :
The only internal evidence that we get in the VL to indicate its upper limit is the reference to Hāla, King of Pratisthāna on the banks of the river Godā (= Godāvarī), which occurs in st. 468' and to the work of Susruta on medicine in st. 519.2 The Hāla referred to in st. 468 is in all probability king Hāla, who is identified with king Sālāhaņa or Sātavāhana or Sālivāhana, the compiler of the Gābāsattasai (Gathāsaptaśatī)in Prākrit and author of some stanzas included therein. He belonged to the Andhrabhţtya dynasty of kings, who, according to Vincent Smith, ruled over the Deccan from about 231 B.C, to about 225 A.C., and who had their administrative head-quarters at Pratişthāna (Baithana, according to the Greek writer Ptolemaios)'. According to the Purāņas, Hāla was the eleventh or seventeenth of the thirty kings in that dynasty. According to the Matsya Purāņa, king Sāta. vāhana ruled 297 years after the commencement of the Andhrabhrtya dynasty, i.e. approximately in the middle of the first century A.D. Weber (Introduction to the edition of Gāthāsas taśati 1881) discusses the whole question on the basis of the contents and language of the Gathāsaptaśatī, and comes to the conclusion 1. पुरिसविसेसेण सइत्तणाई न कुलकमेण महिलाणं ।
सग्गं गए वि हाले न मुयइ गोला पट्टाणं ॥ (सईवज्जा) 2. a clasiñ FSHETITIA fariaza i
FATHA Tunaan g Fee fer qasil (297471). 3. See Weber ( 1881), Introduction, p. XIII.
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